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Used Esoteric Books
We offer a large selection of used books on diverse esoteric subjects. Selections include books by or on Gurdjieff and The Fourth Way, as well as books on Christianity, Advaita Vedanta, Ancient Egypt, Buddhism, and Western and Eastern spirituality.
All listings are rated according to long-established standards using a common set of descriptive terms, based on those set by the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, Library of Congress and Independent Online Booksellers Association.
Book Condition Definitions
AS NEW: Without faults or defects, unread, in the same immaculate condition in which it was published. (Note: very few “new” books qualify for this grade, as many times there will be rubs/scuffs to the dust jackets from shipping, or bumped lower spine ends/corners from shelving).
FINE: Approaches As New, but is not crisp. It may have been carefully read, the dust jacket slightly rubbed, or spine ends slightly bumped from shelving/shipping, but there are no significant defects or faults. (Note: From here on, there may be ‘+’ and ‘–’ in a grade. A ‘+’ indicates above the grade noted but not quite to the next higher grade; a ‘–’ that it is below the grade noted but still above the next lower grade.
NEAR FINE: A book or a dust jacket approaching Fine but with a few minor defects or faults, which are noted.
VERY GOOD: A used book showing some small signs of wear. The book has been clearly read and handled; the dust jacket may show tears or chipping. Any defects or faults are noted.
GOOD: The average used and worn book that has all pages or leaves present and intact.
FAIR: A worn book that has complete text pages and any maps or plates, but may lack endpapers, half-title page, etc.
POOR: A very worn book adequate as a reading copy, with complete and legible text. In addition to other defects, it may have significant flaws such as loose binding or pages.
Other points
Ex-Library: Designated regardless of the book’s condition.
Book Club: Designated regardless of the book’s condition. Names, Inscriptions, Stamps or Remainder
Marks: Designated regardless of the book’s condition.
Price Clipped: If the price has been clipped from a dust jacket, this is noted, though is not considered a flaw.
about…
10 years ago
i got a lil obsessed with collecting audio of alan watts
had to catalog all the media to cd-r about 3-4 yrs ago
and have really not visited since
Divine Horsemen: the Voodoo Gods of Haiti
“Divine Horsemen: the Voodoo Gods of Haiti,” Lyrichord. Recorded in
1947 on a wire recorder with the microphone attachted to a post in
the middle of the ceremony by Maya Deren in the filming of her
documentary of the same name. No Hollywood silly business here, this
is the real deal: a trance/possession ceremony where participants are
actually possessed by the Rada Loa (the pantheon of voodoo gods, the
ancient gods of the East African Fon): Deren says, “There are moments
when the voices of the loa can be heard talking and singing on this
recording.” Astonishing and intricate drumming, powerful almost
beyond comprehension; you’ve never heard anything like it. Regards,
Face A
1. Legba
2. Damballah
3. Agwe
4. Erzulie
5. Ogoun
6. Litany
7. Ghede chant
Face B
1. Invocation to azacca
2. Azacca possession
3. Ghede
4. Azacca
5. Congo cult
6. Petro cult
7. Banda dance for ghede
8. Rara festival
9. Mardi gras carnival
all propers to nauma over at black star liners
-
download the video: Maya Deren Divine Horsemen
or watch @guba.com
i couldn’t get sutostart turned off to embed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Horsemen:_The_Living_Gods_of_Haiti_(film)
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1985) is a black and white documentary film about dance and possession in Haitian vodou that was shot by experimental filmmaker Maya Deren between 1947 and 1952 and edited and completed by Deren’s third husband Teiji Ito and his wife Cherel Winett Ito (1947-1999) in 1981, twenty years after Deren’s death. Most of the film consists of images of dancing and bodies in motion during rituals in Rada and Petro services.
Deren had studied dance as well as photography and filmmaking. She originally went to Haiti with the funding from a Guggenheim fellowship and the stated intention of filming the dancing that forms a crucial part of the vodou ceremony.
The film that resulted, however, reflected Deren’s increasing personal engagement with vodou and its practitioners (Wilcken, 1986). While this ultimately resulted in Deren disregarding the guidelines of the fellowship, Deren was able to record scenes that probably would have been inaccessible to other filmmakers.
Deren’s original notes, film footage, and wire recordings are in the Maya Deren Collection at Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archive Research Center
lifted from the wiki
In the history of science, Laplace’s demon is a thought experiment described by Pierre-Simon Laplace in a paper published in 1814 involving a hypothetical entity envisioned such that if it knew the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe then it could use deterministic principles to reveal the entire course of cosmic events, past and future.[1]
Laplace strongly believed in causal determinism, which is expressed in the following quotation from the introduction to the Essai:
| “ | We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. | ” |
This intellect is often referred to as Laplace’s demon. Note, however, that the description of the hypothetical intellect described above by Laplace as a demon does not come from Laplace, but from later biographers: Laplace saw himself as a scientist; and while hoping that humanity would progress to a better scientific understanding of the world, he recognized that such a complete level of understanding would always be beyond the grasp of human knowledge, as a tremendous calculating power would be needed to take into account every precondition in a given instant. While Laplace considered this to be a mere practical problem, later interpretations of quantum mechanics, which were adopted by philosophers defending the existence of free will, also leave the theoretical possibility of such an “intellect” contested.
n a quantum mechanical world, Laplace’s demon becomes a clear impossibility. Chance is an essential part of the world’s unfolding, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle forbids exact measurements of positions and velocities simultaneously. But even within a hypothetical classical universe, there are reasons to doubt that Laplace’s Demon is a meaningful concept.
John Polkinghorne argues that nature is cloud-like rather than clock-like and points out that, apart from any other problems, uncertainty about the exact position of an electron on the other side of the universe would be sufficient to invalidate a calculation about the position of an O2 molecule in air after 50 collisions with its neighbours (i.e. in about 0.1 ns), even if they were solely influenced by Newton’s laws.[2]
According to chemical engineer Robert Ulanowicz, in his 1986 book Growth and Development, Laplace’s demon met its end with early 19th century developments of the concepts of irreversibility, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics. In other words, Laplace’s demon was based on the premise of reversibility and classical mechanics; thermodynamics, i.e. real processes, however, are, under current theory, thought to be irreversible.
Additionally, the existence of Laplace’s demon is impossible because such an algorithm could predict the future state of a billiard-ball computer and effectively solve the halting problem.
In 2008, David Wolpert used Cantor diagonalization to disprove Laplace’s demon. He did this by assuming that the demon is a computational device and showing that no two such devices can completely predict each other.[3]
There has recently been proposed a limit on the computational power of the universe, i.e. the ability of Laplace’s Demon to process an infinite amount of information. The limit is based on the maximum entropy of the universe, the speed of light, and the minimum amount of time taken to move information across the Planck length, and the figure was shown to be about 10120 bits[4]. Accordingly, anything that requires more than this amount of data cannot be computed in the amount of time that has elapsed so far in the universe.
Another theory suggests that if Laplace’s demon were to occupy a parallel universe or alternate dimension from which it could determine the implied data and do the necessary calculations on an alternate and greater time line the aforementioned time limitation would not apply. This is, in fact, mandatory since if a Laplace’s demon was in the reality that we occupy it would have to account for itself in addition to every other aspect of matter and energy, and the grand total cannot exceed the smaller portion.
Disc 1 – Trance Speech and Direct Voice, Precognition
Disc 2 – Xenoglossy, Glossolalia
Disc 3 – Paranormal Music, Raps and Haunting Phenomena, Electric Voice Phenomena
3 disc box set of paranormal phenomena including “trance speech, direct voices, clairvoyance, xenoglossy, glossolalia including ethnological material, paranormal music, ‘rappings’ and other poltergeist manifestations as well as so-called ‘Electronic voice phenomena’” dating from 1905-2007
“We Are All Connected” was made from sampling The History Channel’s Universe series, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Richard Feynman’s 1983 interviews, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s cosmic sermon, and Bill Nye’s Eyes of Nye Series, plus added visuals from The Elegant Universe (NOVA), Stephen Hawking’s Universe, Cosmos and more.
[deGrasse Tyson]
We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically
[Feynman]
I think nature’s imagination
Is so much greater than man’s
She’s never going to let us relax
[Sagan]
We live in an in-between universe
Where things change all right
But according to patterns, rules,
Or as we call them, laws of nature
[Nye]
I’m this guy standing on a planet
Really I’m just a speck
Compared with a star, the planet is just another speck
To think about all of this
To think about the vast emptiness of space
There’s billions and billions of stars
Billions and billions of specks
[Sagan]
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We’re made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself
Across the sea of space
The stars are other suns
We have traveled this way before
And there is much to be learned
I find it elevating and exhilarating
To discover that we live in a universe
Which permits the evolution of molecular machines
As intricate and subtle as we
[deGrasse Tyson]
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??
(Richard Feynman on hand drums and chanting)
[Feynman]
There’s this tremendous mess
Of waves all over in space
Which is the light bouncing around the room
And going from one thing to the other
And it’s all really there
But you gotta stop and think about it
About the complexity to really get the pleasure
And it’s all really there
The inconceivable nature of nature
-
and of course
another excuse to post this
“A Glorious Dawn” is crafted from sampling Carl Sagan’s 1980 PBS Documentary Cosmos and Stephen Hawking’s 1997 PBS cosmology documentary series Stephen Hawking’s Universe. Cosmos is available to watch for free on Hulu, and many parts of Stephen Hawking’s Universe can be found on Youtube and various other video sites online.
[Sagan]
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe
Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time
The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars
A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way
The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature
I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky
But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions
The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has it’s own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world
[Hawking]
For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit
From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange sounding ideas
[Sagan]
How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds
The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we’ve waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting
nice
i mean NICE doc on “this subject”
angles
ideas
perspectives
vid will mostlikely not play here
but will open to the tudou page proper
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/W6Rjkr3Olvk
Interest in the Mayan Long Count Calendar and 2012 end-of-the-world prophecies is increasing rapidly with about four years left to the target date of December 21, 2012 (or thereabouts).
A significant number of new books, as well as reprints of older ones, on the topic of 2012 are being published, some becoming legitimate bestsellers, including: Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization’s End by Lawrence E. Joseph; Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 by John Major Jenkins; and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck.
On the fiction front, Whitley Strieber’s latest novel, 2012: The War for Souls, is slated to be a Michael Bay-produced (and possibly directed) film at Warner Bros. Pictures.
An increasing number of mainstream publications are writing about 2012. The New York Times Magazine ran a feature on the topic, focusing on John Major Jenkins, in its July 1, 2007 edition; USA Today published an article entitled “Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse?” on March 28, 2007; and Publishers Weekly ran a story about the large number of new books on the topic on March 26, 2007. A second PW story ran in the September 3, 2007 edition with a quote from a well-known editor saying that 2012 “has practically become its own category” of books; and proving that the trend is only strengthening, a year later the September 22, 2008 issue of PW in its cover story stated “publishers agree that New Age readers can’t get enough prophetic 2012 literature,” and “sales on this topic have been through the roof.”
Perhaps most significantly from a mainstream awareness perspective, Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC) is directing a new tent-pole film for Sony Pictures entitled 2012. It is set for wide theatrical release in July, 2009.
The Disinformation Company specializes in publishing articles on topics surfacing in the culture on its popular website at www.disinfo.com and publishes books by authors writing in this and related fields. (For instance, Disinformation author Graham Hancock’s bestselling book Fingerprints of the Gods was one of the first to focus on the Mayan calendar and its end date in 2012, and will be one of the bases for the Roland Emmerich movie.) Of course, in addition to its publishing division, The Disinformation Company also produces and distributes documentary films.
Producer Gary Baddeley recognized that interest in 2012 was on a fast track into the zeitgeist in 2007 and initiated the process of planning and producing 2012: Science Or Superstition with director Nimrod Erez. The Disinformation team, including co-producer Ralph Bernardo, contacted and arranged interviews with multiple experts, often obtaining speedy access due to more than ten years of working with them or colleagues in their fields.
Interviews were conducted in New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Palenque and also shot on location in Mexico and Egypt. Co-producer Bernardo worked with NASA to obtain illuminating footage of our solar system and galaxy and was able to locate leading astronomy professor Anthony Aveni, a cornerstone of the film’s balanced approach. Director Nimrod Erez worked closely with animators to illustrate the sometimes complicated concepts discussed in the film, allowing the viewer to see visually, the hard to grasp phenomenon of precession.
In accord with the Disinformation style of documentary filmmaking and publishing, the producers attempted to highlight multiple views of the subject matter and to interview experts who address the issues from varying and sometimes conflicting perspectives. The goal was to present the viewer with a balanced look at the 2012 phenomenon, allowing him or her to form an independent opinion on the debate about what the December 21, 2012 date means to all of us.
Story behind this clip:
This clip was recorded about ten years ago from a real program on a italian local television.
Through a myspage page (http://www.myspace.com/annamariagalanti ) and some extensive research we managed to get in touch both with Fausto and Anna Maria Galanti. The former is still in good health, and mostly ALIVE. The latter was immediatly fired after this transmission and found herself without a job or a home. In addition, she’s currently fighting with a impostor giving herselfout to be the ‘real’ Countess Anna Maria Galanti. If you understand italian, you can hear Anna Maria yell about the impostor here:
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=rPEMvi-…
Finally, thanks a lot to Funda and Jordan for giving me a hand with the translation.-Statues03
from: aurorainthedesert
Hehehehe Jesus wants to ravish you with His Love! I am not ON ecstasy I’m experiencing ecstasy (or rapturous delight as the dictionary describes it) not a drug induced ecstasy but a God induced one!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=magazine
This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome.
And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story unfolds. It goes as follows: Man skids into midlife and loses his soul. Man goes looking for soul. After a lot of instructive hardship and adventure — taking place entirely in his head — he finds it again.
Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it.
Of those who did see it, at least one person, an educated Englishwoman who was allowed to read some of the book in the 1920s, thought it held infinite wisdom — “There are people in my country who would read it from cover to cover without stopping to breathe scarcely,” she wrote — while another, a well-known literary type who glimpsed it shortly after, deemed it both fascinating and worrisome, concluding that it was the work of a psychotic.
So for the better part of the past century, despite the fact that it is thought to be the pivotal work of one of the era’s great thinkers, the book has existed mostly just as a rumor, cosseted behind the skeins of its own legend — revered and puzzled over only from a great distance.
Which is why one rainy November night in 2007, I boarded a flight in Boston and rode the clouds until I woke up in Zurich, pulling up to the airport gate at about the same hour that the main branch of the United Bank of Switzerland, located on the city’s swanky Bahnhofstrasse, across from Tommy Hilfiger and close to Cartier, was opening its doors for the day. A change was under way: the book, which had spent the past 23 years locked inside a safe deposit box in one of the bank’s underground vaults, was just then being wrapped in black cloth and loaded into a discreet-looking padded suitcase on wheels. It was then rolled past the guards, out into the sunlight and clear, cold air, where it was loaded into a waiting car and whisked away.
THIS COULD SOUND, I realize, like the start of a spy novel or a Hollywood bank caper, but it is rather a story about genius and madness, as well as possession and obsession, with one object — this old, unusual book — skating among those things. Also, there are a lot of Jungians involved, a species of thinkers who subscribe to the theories of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and author of the big red leather book. And Jungians, almost by definition, tend to get enthused anytime something previously hidden reveals itself, when whatever’s been underground finally makes it to the surface.
Carl Jung founded the field of analytical psychology and, along with Sigmund Freud, was responsible for popularizing the idea that a person’s interior life merited not just attention but dedicated exploration — a notion that has since propelled tens of millions of people into psychotherapy. Freud, who started as Jung’s mentor and later became his rival, generally viewed the unconscious mind as a warehouse for repressed desires, which could then be codified and pathologized and treated. Jung, over time, came to see the psyche as an inherently more spiritual and fluid place, an ocean that could be fished for enlightenment and healing.
Whether or not he would have wanted it this way, Jung — who regarded himself as a scientist — is today remembered more as a countercultural icon, a proponent of spirituality outside religion and the ultimate champion of dreamers and seekers everywhere, which has earned him both posthumous respect and posthumous ridicule. Jung’s ideas laid the foundation for the widely used Myers-Briggs personality test and influenced the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. His central tenets — the existence of a collective unconscious and the power of archetypes — have seeped into the larger domain of New Age thinking while remaining more at the fringes of mainstream psychology.
A big man with wire-rimmed glasses, a booming laugh and a penchant for the experimental, Jung was interested in the psychological aspects of séances, of astrology, of witchcraft. He could be jocular and also impatient. He was a dynamic speaker, an empathic listener. He had a famously magnetic appeal with women. Working at Zurich’s Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, Jung listened intently to the ravings of schizophrenics, believing they held clues to both personal and universal truths. At home, in his spare time, he pored over Dante, Goethe, Swedenborg and Nietzsche. He began to study mythology and world cultures, applying what he learned to the live feed from the unconscious — claiming that dreams offered a rich and symbolic narrative coming from the depths of the psyche. Somewhere along the way, he started to view the human soul — not just the mind and the body — as requiring specific care and development, an idea that pushed him into a province long occupied by poets and priests but not so much by medical doctors and empirical scientists.
Jung soon found himself in opposition not just to Freud but also to most of his field, the psychiatrists who constituted the dominant culture at the time, speaking the clinical language of symptom and diagnosis behind the deadbolts of asylum wards. Separation was not easy. As his convictions began to crystallize, Jung, who was at that point an outwardly successful and ambitious man with a young family, a thriving private practice and a big, elegant house on the shores of Lake Zurich, felt his own psyche starting to teeter and slide, until finally he was dumped into what would become a life-altering crisis.
What happened next to Carl Jung has become, among Jungians and other scholars, the topic of enduring legend and controversy. It has been characterized variously as a creative illness, a descent into the underworld, a bout with insanity, a narcissistic self-deification, a transcendence, a midlife breakdown and an inner disturbance mirroring the upheaval of World War I. Whatever the case, in 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”
He later would compare this period of his life — this “confrontation with the unconscious,” as he called it — to a mescaline experiment. He described his visions as coming in an “incessant stream.” He likened them to rocks falling on his head, to thunderstorms, to molten lava. “I often had to cling to the table,” he recalled, “so as not to fall apart.”
Had he been a psychiatric patient, Jung might well have been told he had a nervous disorder and encouraged to ignore the circus going on in his head. But as a psychiatrist, and one with a decidedly maverick streak, he tried instead to tear down the wall between his rational self and his psyche. For about six years, Jung worked to prevent his conscious mind from blocking out what his unconscious mind wanted to show him. Between appointments with patients, after dinner with his wife and children, whenever there was a spare hour or two, Jung sat in a book-lined office on the second floor of his home and actually induced hallucinations — what he called “active imaginations.” “In order to grasp the fantasies which were stirring in me ‘underground,’ ” Jung wrote later in his book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” “I knew that I had to let myself plummet down into them.” He found himself in a liminal place, as full of creative abundance as it was of potential ruin, believing it to be the same borderlands traveled by both lunatics and great artists.
Jung recorded it all. First taking notes in a series of small, black journals, he then expounded upon and analyzed his fantasies, writing in a regal, prophetic tone in the big red-leather book. The book detailed an unabashedly psychedelic voyage through his own mind, a vaguely Homeric progression of encounters with strange people taking place in a curious, shifting dreamscape. Writing in German, he filled 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings.
What he wrote did not belong to his previous canon of dispassionate, academic essays on psychiatry. Nor was it a straightforward diary. It did not mention his wife, or his children, or his colleagues, nor for that matter did it use any psychiatric language at all. Instead, the book was a kind of phantasmagoric morality play, driven by Jung’s own wish not just to chart a course out of the mangrove swamp of his inner world but also to take some of its riches with him. It was this last part — the idea that a person might move beneficially between the poles of the rational and irrational, the light and the dark, the conscious and the unconscious — that provided the germ for his later work and for what analytical psychology would become.
The book tells the story of Jung trying to face down his own demons as they emerged from the shadows. The results are humiliating, sometimes unsavory. In it, Jung travels the land of the dead, falls in love with a woman he later realizes is his sister, gets squeezed by a giant serpent and, in one terrifying moment, eats the liver of a little child. (“I swallow with desperate efforts — it is impossible — once again and once again — I almost faint — it is done.”) At one point, even the devil criticizes Jung as hateful.
He worked on his red book — and he called it just that, the Red Book — on and off for about 16 years, long after his personal crisis had passed, but he never managed to finish it. He actively fretted over it, wondering whether to have it published and face ridicule from his scientifically oriented peers or to put it in a drawer and forget it. Regarding the significance of what the book contained, however, Jung was unequivocal. “All my works, all my creative activity,” he would recall later, “has come from those initial fantasies and dreams.”
Jung evidently kept the Red Book locked in a cupboard in his house in the Zurich suburb of Küsnacht. When he died in 1961, he left no specific instructions about what to do with it. His son, Franz, an architect and the third of Jung’s five children, took over running the house and chose to leave the book, with its strange musings and elaborate paintings, where it was. Later, in 1984, the family transferred it to the bank, where since then it has fulminated as both an asset and a liability.
Anytime someone did ask to see the Red Book, family members said, without hesitation and sometimes without decorum, no. The book was private, they asserted, an intensely personal work. In 1989, an American analyst named Stephen Martin, who was then the editor of a Jungian journal and now directs a Jungian nonprofit foundation, visited Jung’s son (his other four children were daughters) and inquired about the Red Book. The question was met with a vehemence that surprised him. “Franz Jung, an otherwise genial and gracious man, reacted sharply, nearly with anger,” Martin later wrote in his foundation’s newsletter, saying “in no uncertain terms” that Martin could not “see the Red Book, nor could he ever imagine that it would be published.”
And yet, Carl Jung’s secret Red Book — scanned, translated and footnoted — will be in stores early next month, published by W. W. Norton and billed as the “most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology.” Surely it is a victory for someone, but it is too early yet to say for whom.
STEPHEN MARTIN IS a compact, bearded man of 57. He has a buoyant, irreverent wit and what feels like a fully intact sense of wonder. If you happen to have a conversation with him anytime before, say, 10 a.m., he will ask his first question — “How did you sleep?” — and likely follow it with a second one — “Did you dream?” Because for Martin, as it is for all Jungian analysts, dreaming offers a barometric reading of the psyche. At his house in a leafy suburb of Philadelphia, Martin keeps five thick books filled with notations on and interpretations of all the dreams he had while studying to be an analyst 30 years ago in Zurich, under the tutelage of a Swiss analyst then in her 70s named Liliane Frey-Rohn. These days, Martin stores his dreams on his computer, but his dream life is — as he says everybody’s dream life should be — as involving as ever.
Even as some of his peers in the Jungian world are cautious about regarding Carl Jung as a sage — a history of anti-Semitic remarks and his sometimes patriarchal views of women have caused some to distance themselves — Martin is unapologetically reverential. He keeps Jung’s 20 volumes of collected works on a shelf at home. He rereads “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” at least twice a year. Many years ago, when one of his daughters interviewed him as part of a school project and asked what his religion was, Martin, a nonobservant Jew, answered, “Oh, honey, I’m a Jungian.”
The first time I met him, at the train station in Ardmore, Pa., Martin shook my hand and thoughtfully took my suitcase. “Come,” he said. “I’ll take you to see the holy hankie.” We then walked several blocks to the office where Martin sees clients. The room was cozy and cavelike, with a thick rug and walls painted a deep, handsome shade of blue. There was a Mission-style sofa and two upholstered chairs and an espresso machine in one corner.
Several mounted vintage posters of Zurich hung on the walls, along with framed photographs of Carl Jung, looking wise and white-haired, and Liliane Frey-Rohn, a round-faced woman smiling maternally from behind a pair of severe glasses.
Martin tenderly lifted several first-edition books by Jung from a shelf, opening them so I could see how they had been inscribed to Frey-Rohn, who later bequeathed them to Martin. Finally, we found ourselves standing in front of a square frame hung on the room’s far wall, another gift from his former analyst and the centerpiece of Martin’s Jung arcana. Inside the frame was a delicate linen square, its crispness worn away by age — a folded handkerchief with the letters “CGJ” embroidered neatly in one corner in gray. Martin pointed. “There you have it,” he said with exaggerated pomp, “the holy hankie, the sacred nasal shroud of C. G. Jung.”
In addition to practicing as an analyst, Martin is the director of the Philemon Foundation, which focuses on preparing the unpublished works of Carl Jung for publication, with the Red Book as its central project. He has spent the last several years aggressively, sometimes evangelistically, raising money in the Jungian community to support his foundation. The foundation, in turn, helped pay for the translating of the book and the addition of a scholarly apparatus — a lengthy introduction and vast network of footnotes — written by a London-based historian named Sonu Shamdasani, who serves as the foundation’s general editor and who spent about three years persuading the family to endorse the publication of the book and to allow him access to it.
Given the Philemon Foundation’s aim to excavate and make public C. G. Jung’s old papers — lectures he delivered at Zurich’s Psychological Club or unpublished letters, for example — both Martin and Shamdasani, who started the foundation in 2003, have worked to develop a relationship with the Jung family, the owners and notoriously protective gatekeepers of Jung’s works. Martin echoed what nearly everybody I met subsequently would tell me about working with Jung’s descendants. “It’s sometimes delicate,” he said, adding by way of explanation, “They are very Swiss.”
What he likely meant by this was that the members of the Jung family who work most actively on maintaining Jung’s estate tend to do things carefully and with an emphasis on privacy and decorum and are on occasion taken aback by the relatively brazen and totally informal way that American Jungians — who it is safe to say are the most ardent of all Jungians — inject themselves into the family’s business. There are Americans knocking unannounced on the door of the family home in Küsnacht; Americans scaling the fence at Bollingen, the stone tower Jung built as a summer residence farther south on the shore of Lake Zurich. Americans pepper Ulrich Hoerni, one of Jung’s grandsons who manages Jung’s editorial and archival matters through a family foundation, almost weekly with requests for various permissions. The relationship between the Jungs and the people who are inspired by Jung is, almost by necessity, a complex symbiosis. The Red Book — which on one hand described Jung’s self-analysis and became the genesis for the Jungian method and on the other was just strange enough to possibly embarrass the family — held a certain electrical charge. Martin recognized the descendants’ quandary. “They own it, but they haven’t lived it,” he said, describing Jung’s legacy. “It’s very consternating for them because we all feel like we own it.” Even the old psychiatrist himself seemed to recognize the tension. “Thank God I am Jung,” he is rumored once to have said, “and not a Jungian.”
“This guy, he was a bodhisattva,” Martin said to me that day. “This is the greatest psychic explorer of the 20th century, and this book tells the story of his inner life.” He added, “It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.” He had at that point yet to lay eyes on the book, but for him that made it all the more tantalizing. His hope was that the Red Book would “reinvigorate” Jungian psychology, or at the very least bring himself personally closer to Jung. “Will I understand it?” he said. “Probably not. Will it disappoint? Probably. Will it inspire? How could it not?” He paused a moment, seeming to think it through. “I want to be transformed by it,” he said finally. “That’s all there is.”
IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND and decode the Red Book — a process he says required more than five years of concentrated work — Sonu Shamdasani took long, rambling walks on London’s Hampstead Heath. He would translate the book in the morning, then walk miles in the park in the afternoon, his mind trying to follow the rabbit’s path Jung had forged through his own mind.
Shamdasani is 46. He has thick black hair, a punctilious eye for detail and an understated, even somnolent, way of speaking. He is friendly but not particularly given to small talk. If Stephen Martin is — in Jungian terms — a “feeling type,” then Shamdasani, who teaches at the University College London’s Wellcome Trust Center for the History of Medicine and keeps a book by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus by his sofa for light reading, is a “thinking type.” He has studied Jungian psychology for more than 15 years and is particularly drawn to the breadth of Jung’s psychology and his knowledge of Eastern thought, as well as the historical richness of his era, a period when visionary writing was more common, when science and art were more entwined and when Europe was slipping into the psychic upheaval of war. He tends to be suspicious of interpretive thinking that’s not anchored by hard fact — and has, in fact, made a habit of attacking anybody he deems guilty of sloppy scholarship — and also maintains a generally unsentimental attitude toward Jung. Both of these qualities make him, at times, awkward company among both Jungians and Jungs.
The relationship between historians and the families of history’s luminaries is, almost by nature, one of mutual disenchantment. One side works to extract; the other to protect. One pushes; one pulls. Stephen Joyce, James Joyce’s literary executor and last living heir, has compared scholars and biographers to “rats and lice.” Vladimir Nabokov’s son Dmitri recently told an interviewer that he considered destroying his father’s last known novel in order to rescue it from the “monstrous nincompoops” who had already picked over his father’s life and works. T. S. Eliot’s widow, Valerie Fletcher, has actively kept his papers out of the hands of biographers, and Anna Freud was, during her lifetime, notoriously selective about who was allowed to read and quote from her father’s archives.
Even against this backdrop, the Jungs, led by Ulrich Hoerni, the chief literary administrator, have distinguished themselves with their custodial vigor. Over the years, they have tried to interfere with the publication of books perceived to be negative or inaccurate (including one by the award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair), engaged in legal standoffs with Jungians and other academics over rights to Jung’s work and maintained a state of high agitation concerning the way C. G. Jung is portrayed. Shamdasani was initially cautious with Jung’s heirs. “They had a retinue of people coming to them and asking to see the crown jewels,” he told me in London this summer. “And the standard reply was, ‘Get lost.’ ”
Shamdasani first approached the family with a proposal to edit and eventually publish the Red Book in 1997, which turned out to be an opportune moment. Franz Jung, a vehement opponent of exposing Jung’s private side, had recently died, and the family was reeling from the publication of two controversial and widely discussed books by an American psychologist named Richard Noll, who proposed that Jung was a philandering, self-appointed prophet of a sun-worshiping Aryan cult and that several of his central ideas were either plagiarized or based upon falsified research.
While the attacks by Noll might have normally propelled the family to more vociferously guard the Red Book, Shamdasani showed up with the right bargaining chips — two partial typed draft manuscripts (without illustrations) of the Red Book he had dug up elsewhere. One was sitting on a bookshelf in a house in southern Switzerland, at the home of the elderly daughter of a woman who once worked as a transcriptionist and translator for Jung. The second he found at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, in an uncataloged box of papers belonging to a well-known German publisher. The fact that there were partial copies of the Red Book signified two things — one, that Jung had distributed it to at least a few friends, presumably soliciting feedback for publication; and two, that the book, so long considered private and inaccessible, was in fact findable. The specter of Richard Noll and anybody else who, they feared, might want to taint Jung by quoting selectively from the book loomed large. With or without the family’s blessing, the Red Book — or at least parts of it — would likely become public at some point soon, “probably,” Shamdasani wrote ominously in a report to the family, “in sensationalistic form.”
For about two years, Shamdasani flew back and forth to Zurich, making his case to Jung’s heirs. He had lunches and coffees and delivered a lecture. Finally, after what were by all accounts tense deliberations inside the family, Shamdasani was given a small salary and a color copy of the original book and was granted permission to proceed in preparing it for publication, though he was bound by a strict confidentiality agreement. When money ran short in 2003, the Philemon Foundation was created to finance Shamdasani’s research.
Having lived more or less alone with the book for almost a decade, Shamdasani — who is a lover of fine wine and the intricacies of jazz — these days has the slightly stunned aspect of someone who has only very recently found his way out of an enormous maze. When I visited him this summer in the book-stuffed duplex overlooking the heath, he was just adding his 1,051st footnote to the Red Book.
The footnotes map both Shamdasani’s journey and Jung’s. They include references to Faust, Keats, Ovid, the Norse gods Odin and Thor, the Egyptian deities Isis and Osiris, the Greek goddess Hecate, ancient Gnostic texts, Greek Hyperboreans, King Herod, the Old Testament, the New Testament, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, astrology, the artist Giacometti and the alchemical formulation of gold. And that’s just naming a few. The central premise of the book, Shamdasani told me, was that Jung had become disillusioned with scientific rationalism — what he called “the spirit of the times” — and over the course of many quixotic encounters with his own soul and with other inner figures, he comes to know and appreciate “the spirit of the depths,” a field that makes room for magic, coincidence and the mythological metaphors delivered by dreams.
“It is the nuclear reactor for all his works,” Shamdasani said, noting that Jung’s more well-known concepts — including his belief that humanity shares a pool of ancient wisdom that he called the collective unconscious and the thought that personalities have both male and female components (animus and anima) — have their roots in the Red Book. Creating the book also led Jung to reformulate how he worked with clients, as evidenced by an entry Shamdasani found in a self-published book written by a former client, in which she recalls Jung’s advice for processing what went on in the deeper and sometimes frightening parts of her mind.
“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . . Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”
ZURICH IS, IF NOTHING ELSE, one of Europe’s more purposeful cities. Its church bells clang precisely; its trains glide in and out on a flawless schedule. There are crowded fondue restaurants and chocolatiers and rosy-cheeked natives breezily pedaling their bicycles over the stone bridges that span the Limmat River. In summer, white-sailed yachts puff around Lake Zurich; in winter, the Alps glitter on the horizon. And during the lunch hour year-round, squads of young bankers stride the Bahnhofstrasse in their power suits and high-end watches, appearing eternally mindful of the fact that beneath everyone’s feet lie labyrinthine vaults stuffed with a dazzling and disproportionate amount of the world’s wealth.
But there, too, ventilating the city’s material splendor with their devotion to dreams, are the Jungians. Some 100 Jungian analysts practice in and around Zurich, examining their clients’ dreams in sessions held in small offices tucked inside buildings around the city. Another few hundred analysts in training can be found studying at one of the two Jungian institutes in the area. More than once, I have been told that, in addition to being a fantastic tourist destination and a good place to hide money, Zurich is an excellent city for dreaming.
Jungians are accustomed to being in the minority pretty much everywhere they go, but here, inside a city of 370,000, they have found a certain quiet purchase. Zurich, for Jungians, is spiritually loaded. It’s a kind of Jerusalem, the place where C. G. Jung began his career, held seminars, cultivated an inner circle of disciples, developed his theories of the psyche and eventually grew old. Many of the people who enroll in the institutes are Swiss, American, British or German, but some are from places like Japan and South Africa and Brazil. Though there are other Jungian institutes in other cities around the world offering diploma programs, learning the techniques of dream analysis in Zurich is a little bit like learning to hit a baseball in Yankee Stadium. For a believer, the place alone conveys a talismanic grace.
Just as I had, Stephen Martin flew to Zurich the week the Red Book was taken from its bank-vault home and moved to a small photo studio near the opera house to be scanned, page by page, for publication. (A separate English translation along with Shamdasani’s introduction and footnotes will be included at the back of the book.) Martin already made a habit of visiting Zurich a few times a year for “bratwurst and renewal” and to attend to Philemon Foundation business. My first morning there, we walked around the older parts of Zurich, before going to see the book. Zurich made Martin nostalgic. It was here that he met his wife, Charlotte, and here that he developed the almost equally important relationship with his analyst, Frey-Rohn, carrying himself and his dreams to her office two or three times weekly for several years.
Undergoing analysis is a central, learn-by-doing part of Jungian training, which usually takes about five years and also involves taking courses in folklore, mythology, comparative religion and psychopathology, among others. It is, Martin says, very much a “mentor-based discipline.” He is fond of pointing out his own conferred pedigree, because Frey-Rohn was herself analyzed by C. G. Jung. Most analysts seem to know their bloodlines. That morning, Martin and I were passing a cafe when he spotted another American analyst, someone he knew in school and who has since settled in Switzerland. “Oh, there’s Bob,” Martin said merrily, making his way toward the man. “Bob trained with Liliane,” he explained to me, “and that makes us kind of like brothers.”
Jungian analysis revolves largely around writing down your dreams (or drawing them) and bringing them to the analyst — someone who is patently good with both symbols and people — to be scoured for personal and archetypal meaning. Borrowing from Jung’s own experiences, analysts often encourage clients to experiment on their own with active imagination, to summon a waking dreamscape and to interact with whatever, or whoever, surfaces there. Analysis is considered to be a form of psychotherapy, and many analysts are in fact trained also as psychotherapists, but in its purist form, a Jungian analyst eschews clinical talk of diagnoses and recovery in favor of broader (and some might say fuzzier) goals of self-discovery and wholeness — a maturation process Jung himself referred to as “individuation.” Perhaps as a result, Jungian analysis has a distinct appeal to people in midlife. “The purpose of analysis is not treatment,” Martin explained to me. “That’s the purpose of psychotherapy. The purpose of analysis,” he added, a touch grandly, “is to give life back to someone who’s lost it.”
Later that day, we went to the photo studio where the work on the book was already under way. The room was a charmless space with concrete floors and black walls. Its hushed atmosphere and glaring lights added a slightly surgical aspect. There was the editor from Norton in a tweedy sport coat. There was an art director hired by Norton and two technicians from a company called DigitalFusion, who had flown to Zurich from Southern California with what looked to be a half-ton of computer and camera equipment.
Shamdasani arrived ahead of us. And so did Ulrich Hoerni, who, along with his cousin Peter Jung, had become a cautious supporter of Shamdasani, working to build consensus inside the family to allow the book out into the world. Hoerni was the one to fetch the book from the bank and was now standing by, his brow furrowed, appearing somewhat tortured. To talk to Jung’s heirs is to understand that nearly four decades after his death, they continue to reel inside the psychic tornado Jung created during his lifetime, caught between the opposing forces of his admirers and critics and between their own filial loyalties and history’s pressing tendency to judge and rejudge its own playmakers. Hoerni would later tell me that Shamdasani’s discovery of the stray copies of the Red Book surprised him, that even today he’s not entirely clear about whether Carl Jung ever intended for the Red Book to be published. “He left it an open question,” he said. “One might think he would have taken some of his children aside and said, ‘This is what it is and what I want done with it,’ but he didn’t.” It was a burden Hoerni seemed to wear heavily. He had shown up at the photo studio not just with the Red Book in its special padded suitcase but also with a bedroll and a toothbrush, since after the day’s work was wrapped, he would be spending the night curled up near the book — “a necessary insurance measure,” he would explain.
And finally, there sunbathing under the lights, sat Carl Jung’s Red Book, splayed open to Page 37. One side of the open page showed an intricate mosaic painting of a giant holding an ax, surrounded by winged serpents and crocodiles. The other side was filled with a cramped German calligraphy that seemed at once controlled and also, just given the number of words on the page, created the impression of something written feverishly, cathartically. Above the book a 10,200-pixel scanner suspended on a dolly clicked and whirred, capturing the book one-tenth of a millimeter at a time and uploading the images into a computer.
The Red Book had an undeniable beauty. Its colors seemed almost to pulse, its writing almost to crawl. Shamdasani’s relief was palpable, as was Hoerni’s anxiety. Everyone in the room seemed frozen in a kind of awe, especially Stephen Martin, who stood about eight feet away from the book but then finally, after a few minutes, began to inch closer to it. When the art director called for a break, Martin leaned in, tilting his head to read some of the German on the page. Whether he understood it or not, he didn’t say. He only looked up and smiled.
ONE AFTERNOON I took a break from the scanning and visited Andreas Jung, who lives with his wife, Vreni, in C. G. Jung’s old house at 228 Seestrasse in the town of Küsnacht. The house — a 5,000-square-foot, 1908 baroque-style home, designed by the psychiatrist and financed largely with his wife, Emma’s, inheritance — sits on an expanse between the road and the lake. Two rows of trimmed, towering topiary trees create a narrow passage to the entrance. The house faces the white-capped lake, a set of manicured gardens and, in one corner, an anomalous, unruly patch of bamboo.
Andreas is a tall man with a quiet demeanor and a gentlemanly way of dressing. At 64, he resembles a thinner, milder version of his famous grandfather, whom he refers to as “C. G.” Among Jung’s five children (all but one are dead) and 19 grandchildren (all but five are still living), he is one of the youngest and also known as the most accommodating to curious outsiders. It is an uneasy kind of celebrity. He and Vreni make tea and politely serve cookies and dispense little anecdotes about Jung to those courteous enough to make an advance appointment. “People want to talk to me and sometimes even touch me,” Andreas told me, seeming both amused and a little sheepish. “But it is not at all because of me, of course. It is because of my grandfather.” He mentioned that the gardeners who trim the trees are often perplexed when they encounter strangers — usually foreigners — snapping pictures of the house. “In Switzerland, C. G. Jung is not thought to be so important,” he said. “They don’t see the point of it.”
Jung, who was born in the mountain village of Kesswil, was a lifelong outsider in Zurich, even as in his adult years he seeded the city with his followers and became — along with Paul Klee and Karl Barth — one of the best-known Swissmen of his era. Perhaps his marginalization stemmed in part from the offbeat nature of his ideas. (He was mocked, for example, for publishing a book in the late 1950s that examined the psychological phenomenon of flying saucers.) Maybe it was his well-documented abrasiveness toward people he found uninteresting. Or maybe it was connected to the fact that he broke with the established ranks of his profession. (During the troubled period when he began writing the Red Book, Jung resigned from his position at Burghölzli, never to return.) Most likely, too, it had something to do with the unconventional, unhidden, 40-something-year affair he conducted with a shy but intellectually forbidding woman named Toni Wolff, one of Jung’s former analysands who went on to become an analyst as well as Jung’s close professional collaborator and a frequent, if not fully welcome, fixture at the Jung family dinner table.
“The life of C. G. Jung was not easy,” Andreas said. “For the family, it was not easy at all.” As a young man, Andreas had sometimes gone and found his grandfather’s Red Book in the cupboard and paged through it, just for fun. Knowing its author personally, he said, “It was not strange to me at all.”
For the family, C. G. Jung became more of a puzzle after his death, having left behind a large amount of unpublished work and an audience eager to get its hands on it. “There were big fights,” Andreas told me when I visited him again this summer. Andreas, who was 19 when his grandfather died, recalled family debates over whether or not to allow some of Jung’s private letters to be published. When the extended family gathered for the annual Christmas party in Küsnacht, Jung’s children would disappear into a room and have heated discussions about what to do with what he had left behind while his grandchildren played in another room. “My cousins and brothers and I, we thought they were silly to argue over these things,” Andreas said, with a light laugh. “But later when our parents died, we found ourselves having those same arguments.”
Even Jung’s great-grandchildren felt his presence. “He was omnipresent,” Daniel Baumann, whose grandmother was Jung’s daughter Gret, would tell me when I met him later. He described his own childhood with a mix of bitterness and sympathy directed at the older generations. “It was, ‘Jung said this,’ and ‘Jung did that,’ and ‘Jung thought that.’ When you did something, he was always present somehow. He just continued to live on. He was with us. He is still with us,” Baumann said. Baumann is an architect and also the president of the board of the C. G. Jung Institute in Küsnacht. He deals with Jungians all the time, and for them, he said, it was the same. Jung was both there and not there. “It’s sort of like a hologram,” he said. “Everyone projects something in the space, and Jung begins to be a real person again.”
ONE NIGHT DURING the week of the scanning in Zurich, I had a big dream. A big dream, the Jungians tell me, is a departure from all your regular dreams, which in my case meant this dream was not about falling off a cliff or missing an exam. This dream was about an elephant — a dead elephant with its head cut off. The head was on a grill at a suburban-style barbecue, and I was holding the spatula. Everybody milled around with cocktails; the head sizzled over the flames. I was angry at my daughter’s kindergarten teacher because she was supposed to be grilling the elephant head at the barbecue, but she hadn’t bothered to show up. And so the job fell to me. Then I woke up.
At the hotel breakfast buffet, I bumped into Stephen Martin and a Californian analyst named Nancy Furlotti, who is the vice president on the board of the Philemon Foundation and was at that moment having tea and muesli.
“How are you?” Martin said.
“Did you dream?” Furlotti asked
“What do elephants mean to you?” Martin asked after I relayed my dream.
“I like elephants,” I said. “I admire elephants.”
“There’s Ganesha,” Furlotti said, more to Martin than to me. “Ganesha is an Indian god of wisdom.”
“Elephants are maternal,” Martin offered, “very caring.”
They spent a few minutes puzzling over the archetypal role of the kindergarten teacher. “How do you feel about her?” “Would you say she is more like a mother figure or more like a witch?”
Giving a dream to a Jungian analyst is a little bit like feeding a complex quadratic equation to someone who really enjoys math. It takes time. The process itself is to be savored. The solution is not always immediately evident. In the following months, I told my dream to several more analysts, and each one circled around similar symbolic concepts about femininity and wisdom. One day I was in the office of Murray Stein, an American analyst who lives in Switzerland and serves as the president of the International School of Analytical Psychology, talking about the Red Book. Stein was telling me about how some Jungian analysts he knew were worried about the publication — worried specifically that it was a private document and would be apprehended as the work of a crazy person, which then reminded me of my crazy dream. I related it to him, saying that the very thought of eating an elephant’s head struck me as grotesque and embarrassing and possibly a sign there was something deeply wrong with my psyche. Stein assured me that eating is a symbol for integration. “Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “It’s horrifying on a naturalistic level, but symbolically it is good.”
It turned out that nearly everybody around the Red Book was dreaming that week. Nancy Furlotti dreamed that we were all sitting at a table drinking amber liquid from glass globes and talking about death. (Was the scanning of the book a death? Wasn’t death followed by rebirth?) Sonu Shamdasani dreamed that he came upon Hoerni sleeping in the garden of a museum. Stephen Martin was sure that he had felt some invisible hand patting him on the back while he slept. And Hugh Milstein, one of the digital techs scanning the book, passed a tormented night watching a ghostly, white-faced child flash on a computer screen. (Furlotti and Martin debated: could that be Mercurius? The god of travelers at a crossroads?)
Early one morning we were standing around the photo studio discussing our various dreams when Ulrich Hoerni trudged through the door, having deputized his nephew Felix to spend the previous night next to the Red Book. Felix had done his job; the Red Book lay sleeping with its cover closed on the table. But Hoerni, appearing weary, seemed to be taking an extra hard look at the book. The Jungians greeted him. “How are you? Did you dream last night?”
“Yes,” Hoerni said quietly, not moving his gaze from the table. “I dreamed the book was on fire.”
ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH the Red Book — after he has traversed a desert, scrambled up mountains, carried God on his back, committed murder, visited hell; and after he has had long and inconclusive talks with his guru, Philemon, a man with bullhorns and a long beard who flaps around on kingfisher wings — Jung is feeling understandably tired and insane. This is when his soul, a female figure who surfaces periodically throughout the book, shows up again. She tells him not to fear madness but to accept it, even to tap into it as a source of creativity. “If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature.”
The Red Book is not an easy journey — it wasn’t for Jung, it wasn’t for his family, nor for Shamdasani, and neither will it be for readers. The book is bombastic, baroque and like so much else about Carl Jung, a willful oddity, synched with an antediluvian and mystical reality. The text is dense, often poetic, always strange. The art is arresting and also strange. Even today, its publication feels risky, like an exposure. But then again, it is possible Jung intended it as such. In 1959, after having left the book more or less untouched for 30 or so years, he penned a brief epilogue, acknowledging the central dilemma in considering the book’s fate. “To the superficial observer,” he wrote, “it will appear like madness.” Yet the very fact he wrote an epilogue seems to indicate that he trusted his words would someday find the right audience.
Shamdasani figures that the Red Book’s contents will ignite both Jung’s fans and his critics. Already there are Jungians planning conferences and lectures devoted to the Red Book, something that Shamdasani finds amusing. Recalling that it took him years to feel as if he understood anything about the book, he’s curious to know what people will be saying about it just months after it is published. As far as he is concerned, once the book sees daylight, it will become a major and unignorable piece of Jung’s history, the gateway into Carl Jung’s most inner of inner experiences. “Once it’s published, there will be a ‘before’ and ‘after’ in Jungian scholarship,” he told me, adding, “it will wipe out all the biographies, just for starters.” What about the rest of us, the people who aren’t Jungians, I wondered. Was there something in the Red Book for us? “Absolutely, there is a human story here,” Shamdasani said. “The basic message he’s sending is ‘Value your inner life.’ ”
After it was scanned, the book went back to its bank-vault home, but it will move again — this time to New York, accompanied by a number of Jung’s descendents. For the next few months it will be on display at the Rubin Museum of Art. Ulrich Hoerni told me this summer that he assumed the book would generate “criticism and gossip,” but by bringing it out they were potentially rescuing future generations of Jungs from some of the struggles of the past. If another generation inherited the Red Book, he said, “the question would again have to be asked, ‘What do we do with it?’ ”
Stephen Martin too will be on hand for the book’s arrival in New York. He is already sensing that it will shed positive light on Jung — this thanks to a dream he had recently about an “inexpressively sublime” dawn breaking over the Swiss Alps — even as others are not so certain.
In the Red Book, after Jung’s soul urges him to embrace the madness, Jung is still doubtful. Then suddenly, as happens in dreams, his soul turns into “a fat, little professor,” who expresses a kind of paternal concern for Jung.
Jung says: “I too believe that I’ve completely lost myself. Am I really crazy? It’s all terribly confusing.”
The professor responds: “Have patience, everything will work out. Anyway, sleep well.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 20, 2009
An article on Page 34 this weekend about Carl Jung and a book he wrote about struggling with his own demons misspells the name of a street in Zurich where, before it was published, the book was held for years in a bank safe-deposit box, and a correction in this space on Saturday also misspelled the name. It is Bahnhofstrasse, not Banhofstrasse or Banhoffstrasse. The article also misstates the location of Bollingen, the town where Jung built a stone tower as a summer residence. While it is on the north shore of Lake Zurich, it is south of the Jung family home in Küsnacht.
ol boy has a helmet that can…
yeah
just watch
the helmet is in the intro to the lecture itself
i like to listen to this guy speak
his voice
his logic
searchin out more of his work now
kinda curious as to why im ignorant of him given the work n all
“christians” or christ likin folk should pay attention to the 36:45 min mark up until 39:00
and the info presented on rauvolfia
then his remarks on synergism
this is one h.a.i.r.y. fella
47:45 is another buena vista!
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The Pharmacratic Inquisition DVD – Official Online Edition
1:51:19
How deep does the rabbit hole go? Gnostic Media is proud to present the official online edition of The Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007. If you enjoyed “Zeitgeist – The Movie”, you will love this video; the creators of this video are listed as one of the sources for the Zeitgeist Movie. The Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007 is a video version of the book, “Astrotheology & Shamanism” by Jan Irvin & Andrew Rutajit. The painstakingly detailed and heavily footnoted research in the book comes to life in this video and is now available to you for FREE! For further research of the claims made in this video, please read AstroTheology & Shamanism – this book is available to order as a combo with the DVD. Thousands of years ago, in the pre monarchic era, sacred plants and other entheogenic substances where politically correct and highly respected for their ability to bring forth the divine, Yahweh, God, The Great Spirit, etc., by the many cultures who used them. Often the entire tribe or community would partake in the entheogenic rites and rituals. These rites were often used in initiation into adulthood, for healing, to help guide the community in the decision process, and to bring the direct religious experience to anyone seeking it. In the pre literate world, the knowledge of psychedelic sacraments, as well as fertility rites and astronomical knowledge surrounding the sun, stars, and zodiac, known as astrotheology, were anthropomorphized into a character or a deity; consequently, their stories and practices could easily be passed down for generations. Weather changes over millenniums caused environmental changes that altered the available foods and plant sacraments available in the local vicinity. If a tribe lost its shamanic El-der (El – God), all of the tribe’s knowledge of their plant sacraments as well as astronomical knowledge would be lost. The Church’s inquisitions extracted this sacred knowledge from the local Shamans who were then exterminated…It is time to recognize the fact that this Pharmacratic Inquisition is still intact and destroy it.
In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians – Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing – whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.
Renowned linguist Steven Pinker speaks at Google’s Mountain View, CA, headquarters about his book “The Stuff of Thought.” This event took place on September 24, 2007, as part of the Authors@Google series. For more information about Steven Pinker, please visit http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/books/s…
Joe Rogan and Randall Carlson chat about catastrophe, ancient civilizations, consciousness, DMT, and our future as a species…
Jnana Yoga By Sri Swami Sivananda
Introduction
Brahman and Maya
Sadhana Chatushtaya
The Seven Stages of Jnana
Practical Hints
Jnana is knowledge. To know Brahman as one’s own Self is Jnana. To say, “I am Brahman, the pure, all-pervading Consciousness, the non-enjoyer, non-doer and silent witness,” is Jnana. To behold the one Self everywhere is Jnana.
Ajnana is ignorance. To identify oneself with the illusory vehicles of body, mind, Prana and the senses is Ajnana. To say, ” I am the doer, the enjoyer, I am a Brahmin, a Brahmachari, this is mine, he is my son,” is Ajnana. Jnana alone can destroy Ajnana, even as light alone can remove darkness.
Brahman, the Supreme Self, is neither the doer of actions nor the enjoyer of the fruits of actions. The creation, preservation and destruction of the world are not due to Him. They are due to the action of Maya, the Lord’s energy manifesting itself as the world-process.
Just as space appears to be of three kinds – absolute space, space limited by a jar, and space reflected in the water of a jar, – so also there are three kinds of intelligence. They are absolute intelligence, intelligence reflected in Maya, and intelligence reflected in the Jiva (the individual soul). The notion of the doer is the function of intelligence as reflected in the intellect. This, together with the notion of Jiva, is superimposed by the ignorant on the pure and limitless Brahman, the silent witness.
The illustration of space absolute, space limited by a jar and space reflected in water of a jar, is given to convey the idea that in reality Brahman alone is. Because of Maya, however, It appears as three.
The notion that the reflection of intelligence is real, is erroneous, and is due to ignorance. Brahman is without limitation; limitation is a superimposition on Brahman.
The identity of the Supreme Self and the Jiva or reflected self is established through the statement of the Upanishad ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ – ‘That Thou Art’. When the knowledge of the identity of the two arises, then world problems and ignorance, with all their offshoots, are destroyed and all doubts disappear.
Self-realization or direct intuitive perception of the Supreme Self is necessary for attaining freedom and perfection. This Jnana Yoga or the path of Wisdom is, however, not meant for the masses whose hearts are not pure enough and whose intellects are not sharp enough to understand and practice this razor-edge path. Hence, Karma Yoga and Upasana (Bhakti) are to be practiced first, which will render the heart pure and make it fit for the reception of Knowledge.
Brahman is Sat, the Absolute, Reality. That which exists in the past, present and future; which has no beginning, middle and end; which is unchanging and not conditioned by time, space and causation; which exists during the waking, dream and deep sleep states; which is of the nature of one homogeneous essence, is Sat. This is found in Brahman, the Absolute. The scriptures emphatically declare: “Only Sat was prior to the evolution of this universe.”
This phenomenal universe is unreal. Isvara created this universe out of His own body (Maya), just as a spider creates a web from its own saliva. It is merely an appearance, like a snake in a rope or like silver in mother-of-pearl. It has no independent existence.
It is difficult to conceive how the Infinite comes out of Itself and becomes the finite. The magician can bring forth a rabbit out of a hat. We see it happening but we cannot explain it; so we call it Maya or illusion.
Maya is a strange phenomenon which cannot be accounted for by any law of Nature. It is incapable of being described. Its relation to Brahman is like that of heat to fire. The heat of fire is neither one with it nor different from it.
Does Maya really exist or not ? The Advaitin gives this reply: “This inscrutable Maya cannot be said either to exist or not to exist”.
If we know the nature of Brahman, then all names, forms and limitations fall away. The world is Maya because it is not the essential truth of the infinite Reality – Brahman. Somehow the world exists and its relation to Brahman is indescribable. The illusion vanishes through the attainment of knowledge of Brahman. Sages, Rishis and scriptures declare that Maya vanishes entirely as soon as knowledge of the Supreme Self dawns.
Brahman alone really exists. The Jiva, the world and this little “I” are false. Rise above names and forms and kill the false egoism. Go beyond Maya and annihilate ignorance. Constantly meditate on the Supreme Brahman, your divine nature.
The world is unreal when compared to Brahman. It is a solid reality to a worldly and passionate man only. To a realized sage it exists like a burnt cloth. To a Videhamukta (disembodied sage) it does not exist at all. To a man of discrimination it loses its charm and attraction.
Do not leave the world to enter a forest because you now read that the world is unreal. You will be utterly ruined if you do this without proper qualifications. Be first established in the conviction that the world is unreal and Brahman alone is real. This will help you to develop dispassion and a strong yearning for liberation. Stay in the world but be not worldly; strive for liberation by the practice of Sadhana Chatushtaya.
Jnana Yoga of Brahma Vidya or the science of the Self is not a subject that can be understood and realized through mere intellectual study, reasoning, ratiocination, discussion or arguments. It is the most difficult of all sciences.
A student who treads the path of Truth must, therefore, first equip himself with Sadhana Chatushtaya – the “four means of salvation”. They are discrimination, dispassion, the sixfold qualities of perfection, and intense longing for liberation – Viveka, Vairagya, Shad-Sampat and Mumukshutva. Then alone will he be able to march forward fearlessly on the path. Not an iota of spiritual progress is possible unless one is endowed with these four qualifications.
These four means are as old as the Vedas and this world itself. Every religion prescribes them; the names differ from path to path but this is immaterial. Only ignorant people have the undesirable habit of practicing lingual warfare and raising unnecessary questions. Pay no attention to them. It is your duty to try to eat the fruit instead of wasting time in counting the leaves of the tree. Try now to understand these four essential requisites for salvation.
Viveka is discrimination between the real and the unreal, between the permanent and the impermanent, between the Self and the non-Self. Viveka dawns in a man through the Grace of God. The Grace can come only after one has done unceasing selfless service in countless births with the feeling that he is an instrument of the Lord and that the work is an offering to the Lord. The door to the higher mind is flung open when there is an awakening of discrimination.
There is an eternal, changeless principle amidst the ever-changing phenomena of this vast universe and the fleeting movements and oscillations of the mind.
The aspirant should separate himself also from the six waves of the ocean of Samsara – birth and death, hunger and thirst, and exhilaration and grief. Birth and death belong to the physical body; hunger and thirst belong to Prana; exhilaration and grief are the attributes of the mind. The Soul is unattached. The six waves cannot touch Brahman which is as subtle as the all-pervading ether.
Association with saints and study of Vedantic literature will infuse discrimination in man. Viveka should be developed to the maximum degree. One should be well established in it.
Vairagya is dispassion for the pleasures of this world and of heaven. The Vairagya that is born of Viveka is enduring and lasting. It will not fail the aspirant. But the Vairagya that comes temporarily to a woman when she gives birth to a child or when one attends a funeral at a crematorium, is of no use. The view that everything in the world is unreal causes indifference to the enjoyments of this world and the heaven-world also. One has to return from heaven to this plane of existence when the fruits of good works are all exhausted. Hence they are not worth striving for.
Vairagya does not mean abandoning one’s social duties and responsibilities of life. It does not mean abandoning the world, for life in a solitary cave of the Himalayas. Vairagya is mental detachment from all worldly objects. One may remain in the world and discharge all duties with detachment. He may be a householder with a large family, yet at the same time he may have perfect mental detachment from everything. He can do spiritual Sadhana amidst his worldly activities. He who has perfect mental detachment in the world is a hero indeed. He is better than a Sadhu living in a Himalayan cave, for the former has to face innumerable temptations every moment of his life.
The third requisite is Shad-Sampat, the sixfold virtue. It consists of Sama, Dama, Uparati, Titiksha, Sraddha and Samadhana. All these six qualities are taken as one because they are calculated to bring about mental control and discipline, without which concentration and meditation are impossible.
- Sama is serenity or tranquillity of mind which is brought about through the eradication of desires.
- Dama is rational control of the senses.
- Uparati is satiety; it is resolutely turning the mind away from desire for sensual enjoyment. This state of mind comes naturally when one has practiced Viveka, Vairagya, Sama and Dama.
- Titiksha is the power of endurance. An aspirant should patiently bear the pairs of opposites such as heat and cold, pleasure and pain, etc.
- Sraddha is intense faith in the word of the Guru, in Vedantic scriptures and, above all, in one’s own self. It is not blind faith but is based on accurate reasoning, evidence and experience. As such, it is lasting, perfect and unshakable. Such a faith is capable of achieving anything.
- Samadhana is fixing the mind on Brahman or the Self, without allowing it to run towards objects. The mind is free from anxiety amid pains and troubles. There is stability, mental poise and indifference amid pleasures. The aspirant has neither like nor dislikes. He has great inner strength and enjoys unruffled peace of mind, due to the practices of Sama, Dama, Uparati, Titiksha and Sraddha.
Mumukshutva is intense desire for liberation or deliverance from the wheel of births and deaths with its concomitant evils of old age, disease, delusion and sorrow. If one is equipped with the previous three qualifications (Viveka, Vairagya and Shad-Sampat), then the intense desire for liberation will come without any difficulty. The mind moves towards the Source of its own accord when it has lost its charm for external objects. When purification of mind and mental discipline are achieved, the longing for liberation dawns by itself.
The aspirant who is endowed with all these four qualification should then approach the Guru who will instruct him on the knowledge of his real nature. The Guru is one who has a thorough knowledge of the scriptures and is also established in that knowledge in direct experience. He should then reflect and meditate on the inner Self and strive earnestly to attain the goal of Self-realization.
A Sadhaka should reflect and meditate. Sravana is hearing of Srutis, Manana is thinking and reflecting, Nididhyasana is constant and profound meditation. Then comes Atma-Sakshatkara or direct realization.
There are seven stages of Jnana or the seven Jnana Bhumikas. First, Jnana should be developed through a deep study of Atma Jnana Sastras and association with the wise and the performance of virtuous actions without any expectation of fruits. This is Subheccha or good desire, which forms the first Bhumika or stage of Jnana. This will irrigate the mind with the waters of discrimination and protect it. There will be non-attraction or indifference to sensual objects in this stage. The first stage is the substratum of the other stages. From it the next two stages, viz., Vicharana and Tanumanasi will be reached. Constant Atma Vichara (Atmic enquiry) forms the second stage. The third stage is Tanumanasi. This is attained through the cultivation of special indifference to objects. The mind becomes thin like a thread. Hence the name Tanumanasi. Tanu means thread – threadlike state of mind. The third stage is also known by the name Asanga Bhavana. In the third stage, the aspirant is free from all attractions. If any one dies in the third stage, he will remain in heaven for a long time and will reincarnate on earth again as a Jnani. The above three stages can be included under the Jagrat state. The fourth stage is Sattvapatti. This stage will destroy all Vasanas to the root. This can be included under the Svapana state. The world appears like a dream. Those who have reached the fourth stage will look upon all things of the universe with an equal eye. The fifth stage is Asamsakti. There is perfect non-attachment to the objects of the world. There is no Upadhi or waking or sleeping in this stage. This is the Jivanmukti stage in which there is the experience of Ananda Svaroopa (the Eternal Bliss of Brahman) replete with spotless Jnana. This will come under Sushupti. The sixth stage is Padartha Bhavana. There is knowledge of Truth. The seventh stage is Turiya, or the state of superconsciousness. This is Moksha. This is also known by the name Turiyatita. There are no Sankalpas. All the Gunas disappear. This is above the reach of mind and speech. Disembodied salvation (Videhamukti) is attained in the seventh stage.
Remaining in the certitude of Atma, without desires, and with an equal vision over all, having completely eradicated all complications of differentiations of ‘I’ or ‘he’, existence or non-existence, is Turiya.
Purify the Chitta by doing Nishkama Karma for twelve years. The effect of Chitta Suddhi is the attainment of Viveka and Vairagya. Acquire the four qualifications (Sadhana Chatushtaya), – Viveka, Vairagya, Shad Sampat and Mumukshuttva. Then approach a Guru. Have Sravana, Manana and Nididhyasana. Study carefully and constantly the twelve classical Upanishads and Yoga Vasishtha. Have a comprehensive and thorough understanding of the Lakshyartha or indicative (real) meaning of the Maha-Vakya ‘Tat Tvam Asi’. Then, constantly reflect over this real meaning throughout the twenty-four hours. This is Brahma-Chintana or Brahma-Vichara. Do not allow any worldly thoughts to enter the mind. Vedantic realization comes not through mere reasoning but through constant Nididhyasana, like the analogy of Brahmarakita Nyaya (caterpillar and wasp). You get Tadakara, Tadrupa, Tanmaya, Tadiyata, Talleenata (Oneness, identity).
Generate the Brahmakara Vritti from your Sattvic Antahkarana through the influence of reflection on the real meaning of the Maha-Vakyas, ‘Aham Brahma Asmi’ or ‘Tat Tvam Asi’. When you try to feel that you are infinity, this Brahmakara Vritti is produced. This Vritti destroys Avidya, induces Brahma Jnana and dies by itself eventually, like Nirmal seed which removes sediment in the water and itself settles down along with the mud and other dirty matter.
Retire into your meditation chamber. Sit on Padma, Siddha, Svastika or Sukha Asana to begin with. Relax the muscles. Close the eyes. Concentrate on or gaze at the Trikute, the space between the two eyebrows. Repeat ‘Om’ mentally with Brahma-Bhavana. This Bhavana is a sine qua non, very very important. Silence the conscious mind. Repeat mentally, feel constantly:
All-pervading ocean of Light I am OM OM OM
Infinity I am OM OM OM
All-pervading infinite Light I am OM OM OM
Vyapaka Paripoorna Jyotirmaya Brahman I am OM OM OM
Omnipotent I am OM OM OM
Omniscient I am OM OM OM
All Bliss I am OM OM OM
Satchidananda I am OM OM OM
All purity I am OM OM OM
All glory I am OM OM OM
All Upadhis (limiting adjuncts such as body, mind, etc.,) will be sublated. All Granthis (knots of heart, viz., Avidya, Kama and Karma – ignorance, desire and action) will be cut asunder. The thin veil, Avarana, will be pierced. The Pancha Kosha Adhyasa (superimposition) will be removed. You will rest doubtless in Satchidananda state. You will get highest Knowledge, highest Bliss, highest Realization and highest end of life. ‘Brahma Vit Brahmaiva Bhavati’. You will become Suddha Satchidananda Vyapaka Paripoorna Brahman. Nasti Atra Samsayah’, there is no doubt of that.
There is no difficulty at all in Atma-Darshan, in Self-Realization. You can have this within the twinkling of an eye as Raja Janaka had, before you can squeeze a flower with fingers, within the time taken for a grain to fall when rolled over a pot. You must do earnest, constant and intense practice. You are bound to succeed in two or three years.
Now-a-days there are plenty of ‘Talking Brahman’. No flowery talk or verbosity can make a man Brahman. It is constant, intense, earnest Sadhana and Sadhana alone can give a man direct Aparoksha Brahmic realization (Svanubhava or Sakshatkara) wherein he sees Brahman just as he sees the solid white wall in front of him and feels Brahman, just as he feels the table behind him. Practice, practice, practice and become established in Brahman.
http://www.dlshq.org/teachings/jnanayoga.htm
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Erowid Yoga Vault: Jnana Yoga
the yoga of knowledge or wisdom
requiring strength of will and intellect
Taking the philosophy of Vedanta the Jnana yogi uses his mind to inquire into its own nature. We perceive the space inside and outside a glass as different, just as we see ourselves as separate from the spirit. Jnana Yoga leads the devotee to experience his unity with the spirit directly by breaking the glass, dissolving the veils of ignorance. Before practising Jnana Yoga, the aspirant needs to have integrated the lessons of the other yogic paths, for without selflessness and love of all, strength of body and mind, the search for self-realization can become mere idle speculation. Jnana Yoga techniques and paths include:
- Viveka – The technique of intellectual discernment or discrimination of the true self from distractions.
- Neti-neti – The technique of discarding, one by one, thoughts and distractions which are not the true self.
- Vicara – The tecyhnique of internal examination and reflection.
- Vairagya – The practice of dispassion or detachment.
- Shad-sampat – The path of the six virtues.
- Mumukshutva – Intense longing for liberation.
http://www.erowid.org/spirit/yoga/yoga_jnana.shtml
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jnana yoga: the yoga of knowledge
Jnana Yoga is practical Philosophy/Metaphysics.
It is both theory and practice.
Jnana Yoga uses the intellect as a tool to understand that our true Self is behind and beyond our mind. It is, however, a mistake to think the Source could be found with the intellect alone. For the purpose of Self-discovery, Jnana Yoga probes the nature of the Self through the question “Who am I?” Thus Jnana Yoga may be called the Quest for the Self or the Inquiry into “who we are.”
Who practices Jnana Yoga?
Some seekers, who do not require tools like Jnana Yoga, already have a strong belief in God and Spiritual survival and require no other system than to believe in God and love God with all their heart. That is the path of main stream Religion and that of Bhakti Yoga. Other seekers feel they need to do good and self-less deeds. That is also the path of Religion as well as the path of Karma Yoga. Some seekers have their belief but need a more systematic approach. Generally, they like systems like: Raja, Ashtanga, or Kriya Yoga. At times, seekers feel they need more outside assistance; they are good candidates for Religion, Shaktipat, and Siddha Yoga.
Finally, there are seekers who want to believe but have a greater need to understand; they have lots of questions and need all of them answered. These seekers are the best candidates for Jnana Yoga. Jnana Yoga is not alien to other systems or religions. One could say that the beginnings of Jnana Yoga are found in Vedanta, the philosophy of Vedic Scripture. These writings are even older than the Bible and there are scholars who see the origin of all major religions in these ‘revelations of Truth.’ The relationship between the Bible and Vedanta was also pointed out by Ramana Maharshi, who once said that the whole Vedanta is contained in the two Biblical statements: “I am that I AM” and “Be still and know that I am God.”
Is Jnana Yoga a mere intellectual exercise?
Definitely not. Practically all questions may be answered intellectually but not final questions like:
Who or what is God? Or, who or what is the Self? The answer to “who is the Self,” must be the Self by ‘It-Self’. The answer to “who is God”, must be God by Him\She\Itself. As a first result of Jnana Yoga or introspection, we can intellectually realize that God’s nature must be pure Beingness or pure Awareness, or we may realize that at the center of our Being is pure Beingness and that this is the real Self – but to know the Self we must be the Self. To know Beingness, we must be Beingness or pure Awareness. This could be compared with an orgasm: We may hear in detail what it feels like but to really know what it is we must have the actual experience. In order to have the experience of God’s omnipresence, we may intellectually realize, what Jnana Yoga and Religion has taught all along, that we should not produce a single thought in the otherwise pure Awareness (Psalm: “Be still and know that I am God”), but to be still is not an intellectual exercise; that is done with Meditation. The meditation in Jnana Yoga is to concentrate on the answer to the question: “Who am I?” Or, to simply hang on to the first of all thoughts which is “I”. That might sound strange and egotistical, but every thought we produce is added to “I”, is following the “I”.
Thus we may say: I see you, I do this, and so on. First comes I – then everything else. If we concentrate on “I” until the thought can be held, then we are already at the root of all problems and errors. In time, even this thought will disappear leaving nothing else but pure Awareness. That is the omnipresence of God. It should be quite clear that we still continue to exist without thinking.
We must also realize that such a thoughtless condition must be possible. However, if one simply tries to stop thinking just for a moment, we encounter the resistance of our ego. Since the ego cannot consist of anything more than thoughts, it is constantly weakened by our meditation, as long as we really try to stick with our Mantram, which for a Jnana Yogi may simply be “I”. The best promise of the Jnana Yoga system is the possible culmination into Sahaja Samadhi; that is when the natural condition of the Self continues even during regular activities, free of worries and anxiety.
Shankara and, more recently, Ramana Maharshi are the classic authorities concerning Jnana Yoga. Like Hatha- and Radja Yogis, Jnana Yogis also acknowledge the relationship between breathing and thinking. However, they found out that breathing slows automatically through the concentration on the “I-AM.” Through persistent probing, fixing our attention on the source of our Being, we regain our real Self; we remember who we are.
The inquiry, as the result of practising Jnana Yoga, leads us towards clear Awareness by removing our attention from that which we are not. Along with Bhakti Yoga (Devotion), Jnana is listed among the best approaches for becoming aware of the eternal Self (God).
See “Self-Knowledge,” a short outline based on Shankara’s treatise, as an introduction to Jnana Yoga.
See Ramana Maharshi as the ultimate source for instruction in the tradition of Jnana Yoga.
http://www.self-realization.com/articles/yoga/jnana_yoga.htm
Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light
The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal.
Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.
(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation – an invisible form of light – that comes from body heat.)
To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.
The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.
Faces glowed more than the rest of the body. This might be because faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, since they get more exposure to sunlight - the pigment behind skin color, melanin, has fluorescent components that could enhance the body’s miniscule light production.
Since this faint light is linked with the body’s metabolism, this finding suggests cameras that can spot the weak emissions could help spot medical conditions, said researcher Hitoshi Okamura, a circadian biologist at Kyoto University in Japan.
“If you can see the glimmer from the body’s surface, you could see the whole body condition,” said researcher Masaki Kobayashi, a biomedical photonics specialist at the Tohoku Institute of Technology in Sendai, Japan.
The scientists detailed their findings online July 16 in the journal PLoS ONE.
Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rhythm
1 Department of Electronics and Intelligent Systems, Tohoku Institute of Technology, Sendai, Japan, 2 Department of Systems Biology, Kyoto University Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto, Japan, 3 Department of Brain Science, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan
The human body literally glimmers. The intensity of the light emitted by the body is 1000 times lower than the sensitivity of our naked eyes. Ultraweak photon emission is known as the energy released as light through the changes in energy metabolism. We successfully imaged the diurnal change of this ultraweak photon emission with an improved highly sensitive imaging system using cryogenic charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. We found that the human body directly and rhythmically emits light. The diurnal changes in photon emission might be linked to changes in energy metabolism.
Citation: Kobayashi M, Kikuchi D, Okamura H (2009) Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rhythm. PLoS ONE 4(7): e6256. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006256
Editor: Joseph Najbauer, City of Hope Medical Center, United States of America
Received: March 4, 2009; Accepted: June 11, 2009; Published: July 16, 2009
Copyright: © 2009 Kobayashi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This work was supported in part by The Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (M.K) and The Special Promotion Funds (H.O) from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* E-mail: masaki@tohtech.ac.jp (MK); okamurah@pharm.kyoto-u.ac.jp (HO)
Introduction Top
Bioluminescence, which is weak but visible, is sometimes produced in living organisms, such as fireflies or jellyfish, as the result of specialized enzymatic reactions that require adenosine triphosphate. However, virtually all living organisms emit extremely weak light, spontaneously without external photoexcitation [1]. This biophoton emission is categorized in different phenomena of light emission from bioluminescence, and is believed to be a by-product of biochemical reactions in which excited molecules are produced from bioenergetic processes that involves active oxygen species [1], [2]. Human body is glimmering with light of intensity weaker than 1/1000 times the sensitivity of naked eyes [3], [4]. By using a sensitive charge-coupled-device (CCD) camera with the ability to detect light at the level of a single photon, we succeeded in imaging the spontaneous photon emission from human bodies [3].
Previously, for obtaining an image, it took more than 1 hour of acquisition, which is practically impossible for the analysis of physiologically relevant biophoton emission. By improving the CCD camera and lens system, here we have succeeded in obtaining clear images using a short exposure time, comparable with the analysis of physiological phenomena. Since metabolic rates are known to change in a circadian fashion [5], [6], we investigated the temporal variations of biophoton emission across the day from healthy human body.
Results and Discussion Top
A cooled CCD camera operated at −120°C with slow scanning mode read-out was used with a specially designed high-throughput lens system. The camera was placed in a light-tight room in complete darkness (schematic illustration of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1A). Five healthy male volunteers, in their 20′s, were subjected to normal light-dark conditions and allowed to sleep from 0:00–7:00. On the days of photon imaging, volunteers were kept in a room (400 lux) adjacent to the dark room. For imaging purposes, the body surface was wiped and the subject was left 15 minutes in the dark room for dark adaptation, after which the naked subject in sitting position was exposed for 20 minutes to the CCD camera. Measurements were carried out in every 3 hours from 10:00 to 22:00 and continued for 3 days. Just before and after the measurements, the surface body (thermography) and oral temperature were taken. Saliva was also collected after the photon measurements for the analysis of cortisol level as a biomarker of endogenous circadian rhythms. Temporal variation of photon emission intensity was calculated from image data with extraction of the face and body intensity.
A. Schematic illustration of experimental setup. B–F. Images of ultraweak photon emission from human body. B. Image of the subject under light illumination. C. Image at 10:10. D. Image at 13:10. E. Image at 16:10. F. Image at 19:10. G. Image at 22:10 with a calibration bar which indicates the estimated radiation intensity expressed by photon number per unit of time per unit of skin surface. H. Daily rhythm of photon emission from face and body from 5 volunteers. Significant difference from the photon emission at 10:00 AM (n = 15, Mean±SD; **P<0.01, *P<0.05). I. A typical thermographic image of the subject from Fig. 1B–G.
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The daily variation of photon emission is shown in Fig. 1B–G. In all images, photon emission intensity from the face was higher than from the body. Moreover, photon emission intensity from the face was not homogeneous: the central area around the mouth and the cheeks was higher than the lateral area and the orbits. Furthermore, the photon emission intensity on the face and upper body appeared to display time-dependent changes. We plotted total photon emission intensity over the body and face against time, averaged across the 5 volunteers (Fig. 1H). Photon emission was weak in the morning, increased in the afternoon and peaked in the late afternoon (ca 16:00) (one way ANOVA, F4,74 = 4.10, P<0.005). These data strongly suggest that there is a diurnal rhythm of photon emission from the human body. To further support this conclusion, immediately following the end of the previous experiment three volunteers were kept awake in a light (400 lux) environment and photon emission was measured at 1:00, 4:00 and 7:00 AM (Supplementary Figure S1). Photon emission formed a peak at late afternoon, then gradually decreased and stayed low at 1:00–7:00 AM in a constantly exposed light condition (400 lux), indicating the diurnal rhythm of photon might be caused by endogenous circadian mechanism.
Ultraweak biophoton emission was completely different from thermographic images showing surface temperature (Fig.1I). High photon emission were detected from the cheeks, followed by the upper neck and the forehead, while high temperature was detected in the supraclavicular lateral neck region, from which photon emission was low. In cheek, the highest level of emission reaches to 3000 photon/s·cm2 at 16:00 which is about double to the value at 10:00.
Next, we examined the correlation of photon emission to other physiological parameters known to show circadian variations. In the subject of Fig.1B–G, we found a temporal decrease of cortisol from morning to evening, in opposite to the increase of photon emission (Fig. 2A). Cortisol concentration shows a clear daily rhythm, peaking in the morning and negatively correlated with photon emission intensity (p<0.002; from 5 volunteers; Fig. 2B). Body temperature, another parameter showing daily rhythms peaking at night, does not show significant correlation with photon emission (Supplementary Figure S2).
A. Comparison of temporal variation of biophoton emission intensity and cortisol concentration in saliva observed through 3 days. Shaded regions indicate sleeping time. The subject is the one of Fig. 1B–G. B. Daily change of cortisol secretion (left; n = 15, Mean±SD) and its correlation with photon emission intensity (right). A negative correlation was found (r = −0.3074, P<0.002).
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The photon emission mechanism is thought to originate from the generation of free radicals in energy metabolic processes. The spectra of photon emission detected from the palm skin span from 500 to 700 nm, with primary and secondary emission peaks at 630–670 nm and 520–580 nm, respectively [7]. Free radicals subsequently react with lipid or protein, generating electronically excited species as byproducts [1]. These excited molecules, such as carbonyl group in excited triplet state from lipid peroxidation or proteins including excited tyrosine or tryptophan, can further react with fluorophores through energy transfer and lead to photon emission [8], [9]. Higher level photon emission on facial skin might be caused by differences in the content of melanin fluorophores [10] between facial and thoracic skin.
No significant correlation of daily photon intensity and temperature was found, and the dissimilarity between photon emission and thermal image suggest that the diurnal rhythm of photon emission is not a consequence of a change of temperature or microcirculation. Moreover, a clear negative correlation of temporal changes of photon emission and cortisol might suggest that the diurnal rhythm of photon emission reflects the changes of cellular metabolic processes under the control of the circadian clock. Circadian rhythms are generated in most cells throughout the body, driven by clock genes interlocked in transcription/translation feedback loops [11], [12]. Recent advances of chronobiology have revealed that the redox state of the cells regulates circadian gene expression, indicating the importance of metabolic cues for clock oscillations [6], [13], [14]. Indeed, glucose utilization, accompanied by oxygen consumption, shows robust rhythms in the main mammalian circadian center [5]. By the regulation of cellular respiratory chain producing reactive oxygen species, which in turns react with molecules including proteins, lipids and fluorophores, whose excited states emit biophotons [1], [8], [9], [10], the human body glitters to the rhythm of the circadian clock.
Materials and Methods Top
CCD camera system
Spectral Instruments 600 series CCD camera system (Spectral Instruments, Inc., AZ, USA) was used. Mounted CCD42-40 (e2v technologies Ltd., Essex, UK), which is a back-illuminated, full-frame operation CCD with a 2048×2048 pixel resolution and 13.5×13.5 µm pixel size. The camera system is equipped with a cooling head to maintain the CCD at −120°C using a closed-cycle mechanical cryogenic unit. Under these conditions, quantum efficiency is 75% at the peak wavelength. Dark current is 0.65 electron/pixel/h and readout noise in the slow scanning mode is less than 4.5 electron rms. The CCD camera head has a specially designed lens system, which is designed to maximize the light collection efficiency (numerical aperture (NA) of the lens system on the detector side is 0.5 and the number of lenses is restricted 7 pieces). Magnification of the lens system is 1/20 and the light collection efficiency to the surface of the subject is 1.0×10−3. In this experiment, the CCD was operated in the 8×8 binning mode, and the actual pixel number was 256×256. Taking into account the detection limit, which is determined by dark current and readout noise of the CCD, as well as light collection efficiency, the minimum detectable number of photons on each pixel is estimated ca 100 photon/s/cm2 on the surface of the subject under the measurement condition.
Measurement procedure
All study participants were healthy males in their 20′s without any skin diseases or oral medications. The average time of sleep onset was 23:30 hours (range, 23:00 to 01:00 hours) and that for awakening was 06:15 hours (range, 06:00 to 07:00 hours). No attempt was made to synchronize the sleeping habits of the study participants before the study. From one week before the experiments, subjects were under controlled conditions to maintain regular sleeping hours. Subjects were not allowed to use cosmetics including aftershave lotion. Volunteers had lunch at 12:30 hours and dinner at 18:30 hours. Snacks and cold drinks were allowed between meals, at the study participant’s discretion. During body imaging, participants were naked from the waist up. After a slight wipe of the body with lukewarm water, one by one the subjects were invited in the darkroom and where a relax chair was provided. Before photon emission measurements, the subjects were left 15 minutes in the darkroom for dark adaptation. During the dark adaptation, a thermograph to check the surface temperature of the body and a picture of the subject under weak light illumination for focusing are taken. Biophoton emission measurements are taken continuously for 20 minutes by the CCD camera. During measurements, comfortable music was provided for relaxation but sleep was not allowed. At the end of the measurements, thermograph and picture under weak illumination are taken again, together with the oral temperature. Photon emission intensity from the face and upper body was calculated from imaging data. Salivary cortisol levels were measured by radioimmunoassay. For statistical analysis, one-way ANOVAs followed by Bonferroni/Dunn’s multiple comparisons were applied. The above experiments are approved by the Ethical Committee of Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine.
Supporting Information Top
Photon emission in sleep deprived volunteers. Three volunteers kept in constant light environment (400 lux) without sleep, and photon counts were measured at 25:00 (1:00AM), 28:00 (4:00AM) and 31:00 (7:00AM) (red dots). Note the levels of photon emissions at these time points are much lower than evening value. The values from 10:00–22:00 are adopted from Figure 1H (n = 15, Mean±SD).
(5.65 MB TIF)
Daily change of oral temperature (left; n = 15, Mean±SD) (a), and its correlation to photon emission intensity (b). There was no significant correlation between photon emission and oral temperature (r = 0.1630, p = 0.1682).
(7.76 MB TIF)
Author Contributions Top
Conceived and designed the experiments: MK HO. Performed the experiments: MK DK HO. Analyzed the data: MK DK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MK. Wrote the paper: MK HO.
References Top
- (1988) ‘Biophoton emission’ multi-author review. Experientia 44: 543–600. Find this article online
- (1999) In vivo imaging of spontaneous ultraweak photon emission from a rat’s brain correlated with cerebral energy metabolism and oxidative stress. Neurosci Res 34: 103–113. Find this article online
- (2003) Spontaneous ultraweak photon emission of living organisms—biophotons—phenomena and detection techniques for extracting biological information. Trends in Photohchem. Photobiol 10: 111–135. Find this article online
- (1999) Ultraweak photon emission of human skin in vivo: influence of topically applied antioxidants on human skin. Methods Enzymol 300: 419–428. Find this article online
- (1977) Suprachiasmatic nucleus: use of 14C-labeled deoxyglucose uptake as a functional marker. Science 97: 89–91. Find this article online
- (2001) Circadian clocks: running on redox. Cell 106: 141–143. Find this article online
- (1991) Physiological state and biophoton emission of living body. In: Inaba H, editor. Final report on Inaba Biophoton Project: Res. Develop. Corp. Japan. pp. 239–277. (in Japanese).
- (1984) Biological Chemiluminescence. Photochem Photobiol 40: 823–830. Find this article online
- (1989) Low-level chemiluminescence during lipid peroxidations and enzymatic reaction. J Biolum Chemilum 4: 231–240. Find this article online
- (1999) Femtosecond two-photon excited fluorescence of melanin. Photochem Photobiol 70: 146–151. Find this article online
- (2004) Clock genes in cell clocks: roles, actions, and mysteries. J. Biol. Rhythms 19: 388–399. Find this article online
- (2003) Synchronization of cellular clocks in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Science 302: 1408–1412. Find this article online
- (2001) Circadian rhythms. Chronobiology–reducing time. Science 293: 437–438. Find this article online
- (2001) NPAS2: an analog of clock operative in the mammalian forebrain. Science 293: 506–510. Find this article online
A. Schematic illustration of experimental setup. B–F. Images of ultraweak photon emission from human body. B. Image of the subject under light illumination. C. Image at 10:10. D. Image at 13:10. E. Image at 16:10. F. Image at 19:10. G. Image at 22:10 with a calibration bar which indicates the estimated radiation intensity expressed by photon number per unit of time per unit of skin surface. H. Daily rhythm of photon emission from face and body from 5 volunteers. Significant difference from the photon emission at 10:00 AM (n = 15, Mean±SD; **P<0.01, *P<0.05). I. A typical thermographic image of the subject from Fig. 1B–G.
http://aiwazzsaying.blogspot.com
aiwazzsaying is an esoteric library blog
Everything is deeply intertwingled.
—Ted Nelson
The literatures that touch on synesthesias—scientific, art-historical, literary, phenomenological, ethnographic, psychedelic—vary widely in their definitions, interpretations, and in their degree of comfort with the first-person, subjective nature of experiential reports. The significances given to synesthetic experiences are similarly wide-ranging. This article explores the relationships among synesthesias, psychedelic experience, and language, highlighting Terence McKenna’s synesthetic language experiences on DMT and magic mushrooms. The complexities of creating and performing with the Intertwingulator, a system that provides the means to weave together, in multiple mappings, two or more complex visual, aural, and linguistic systems in live performance, are briefly described.
Contemporary neuroscience (Cytowic, Marks, Harrison) views synesthesia as a rare, (perhaps abnormal, perhaps pathological) ‘condition.’ Visionary artists, (Blake, Scriabin, Kandinsky, the French symbolists) link synesthetic perception to a spiritual dimension. Phenomenologists (Abram, based in Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenologist of perception) locates synesthesia as fundamental to perception and language, both spoken and written. Ethnographic reports of ayahuasca shamanism in the Amazonian rain forest (Luna, Amaringo) describe the centrality of the icaros, the shaman’s songs, that guide and create the content of the visionary experience on many levels, calling visual forms and presences into being with sound. Reports of psychedelic synesthesias (James, Pankhe, McKenna, Munn, Narby) link the states of multisensory perception to noetic experience of deep insights into the nature of reality and consciousness, and their profound intertwinglement.. A range of contemporary artistic practices, especially in immersive, interactive, electronic media environments seek to create, or invoke, synesthesias. The psychedelic connections to the creation and participation in many of these experiences (rave culture, Burning Man), and their enabling technologies—such as computer graphics, are common knowledge.
This paper touches on one example of such artistic experimentation. The Intertwingulator is a Max software implementation that can link the sensory qualities of two or more intricate systems, each producing complex, aesthetic forms in differing sensory modalities through an intermediate zone (the intertwingulator) where mappings can be constructed and tested in performance. The Glide system of dynamic, multidimensional visual language is mapped to keyboard input from a midi synthesizer and/or from another software system, such as composer Pauline Olivero’s EIS (Expanded Instrumentation System) to create a variety of synesthetic performances. The collaborators acknowledge the dual difficulties: technological and aesthetic. Making the technology work on the one hand and designing and performing a meaningful aesthetic experience with these highly complex instruments are interdependent challenges.
A Synesthetic Sampler
“Sounds seem to affect what I see. I see music; the textures of rhythms and the colors of melodies float before my eyes.. My visual images alter or change whenever I hear a sound or noise…Sight, feeling, motion, texture, thinking, sound—all are one….The interaction between sight, music, and physical feeling is most remarkable.” (Dobkin de Rios, p. 48.)
“When I get there I lie down with my eyes closed and sunglasses on, there is some interesting synesthesia going on, corresponding patterns in regards to distance and volume and other characteristics of the sounds I hear. The most interesting ‘looking’ sound comes from a moped that passes by on the bike road below the hill.” (DOM, Vaults of Erowid)
“I experienced powerful synesthesia between hearing and touch. I ran my
hands over the sharp edges of the springs underneath my girlfriend’s bed and simultaneously heard, felt, and saw an intense static/sharp/bright sensation.” (5-MeO-DMT,Vaults of Erowid)
“Your name, Richard, tastes like a chocolate bar,” she writes, “warm and melting on my tongue.” (Cytowic, p. 14)
“The spirits one sees in hallucinations are three-dimensional, sound-emitting images. In other words, they are made of their own language, like DNA.” (Narby, p. 71)
“Through his icaro, he also calls the rainbow with the whole range of colors that the boa yakumama has. He sings the icaro of the diamond, the gold, the silver, and of all the precious stones in order to put them on the woman to protect her…” (Luna, p. 112.)
“The first thing I saw was the ‘visible language’! … The ‘elves’ appeared. They sang/I saw/read/felt/heard. They are ‘made out’ of the visible language. The message is conveyed by the medium itself in several simultaneous sensory modalities.” (DMT, Vaults of Erowid)
“The ancient wise men, to describe the kaleidoscopic illuminations of their shamanistic nights, drew an analogy between the inside and the outside and formed a word that related the spectrum colors created by the sunshine in the spray of waterfalls and the mists of the morning to their conscious experiences of ecstatic enlightenment: these are the whirlwinds he speaks of, gyrating configurations of iridescent lights that appear to him as he speaks, turned round and round and round himself by the turbulent winds of the spirit.” (Henry Munn)
Neologisms in Ancient Geek
Xanadu never shipped, but Ted Nelson’s word still bears fruit, now in the context of synesthesia. Intertwingle: itself a blended word, (to say it is to do it: noeto-poetic?) a braid of intertwining, mingling, perhaps twisting together, the deepness of which suggests the mycelial networks of brain and WWW; the immersive, multisensory bombardment of a rave; googling around the fractal depths of contemporary dataspaces; navigating by synchronicities, “hints and allegations;” dense heterarchies of meaning emerging and dissolving; connecting paths and patterns, linkings, unlinkings. And this theme of intertwingularity is the common ground underlying the discourses of synesthesia, whatever the variances among epistemological theme parks, or the bewildering richness person to person in experiential reports, whether those reports are quoted in neuroscientific works, the Vaults of Erowid, William Blake’s visions, or the heavenly or hellish trip reports of Aldous Huxley.
The Noetic Disconnection
From this small sampling of quotes, it seems clear that under the broad rubric of “synesthesia” almost any sensory—and/or emotional—and/or cognitive experience can be cross-linked. Neuroscientist Richard Cytowic narrows the definition of synesthesia to
“the involuntary physical experience of a cross-modal association. That is, the stimulation of one sensory modality reliably causes a perception in one or more different senses. Its phenomenology clearly distinguishes it from metaphor, literary tropes, sound symbolism, and deliberate artistic contrivances that sometimes employ the term “synesthesia” to describe their multisensory joinings.”
Cytowic estimates the occurrence of the synesthetic experience to be statistically rare, one in 25,000. When psychedelics are the testbed of synesthesias, the occurrence of synesthesias increases dramatically:
“It is reasonably common for individuals who take hallucinogens to report that their senses become mixed. Given the illicit nature of the topic it is hard to find reliable data on this issue, but a recent web-based questionnaire conducted by Don DeGracia, suggested that, of a total of 62 respondents who admitted to using hallucinogenic compounds, 45.9% reported synesthetic symptoms. Clearly the most common manifestation (over 90%) was to see sounds. Now, just as with the patients described in the last section, it would be prudent to treat such accounts with an element of caution, as it can be hard to dissociate ‘true’ synesthesia from possibly imagined forms of the condition.” (Harrison)
Questioning the reality or validity of these experiences in the scientific discourses is common, and interesting ambivalences arise in the handling and evaluation of first person reports. On the one hand, Cytowic invokes The Varieties of Religious Experience, in which “William James’ spoke of ecstasy’s four qualities of ineffability, passivity, noesis, and transience,” claiming that “These same qualities are shared by synesthesia.” Further, in the section titled “The Rejection of Direct Experience,” Cytowic states that “Questioning its reality [synesthesia] without first having some technological confirmation shows how ready we are to reject any first-hand experience. We are addicted to the external and the rational. Our insistence on a third-person, “objective” understanding of the world has just about swept aside all other forms of knowledge.” At the same time, this very ineffability, is, for Cytowic, a bug not a feature. He sympathizes with Heinrich Kluver, who, in trying to get his subjects to report on their mescaline hallucinations, “was frustrated by the vagueness with which subjects described their experience, their eagerness to yield uncritically to cosmic or religious explanations, to “interpret” or poetically embroider the experience in lieu of straightforward but concrete description, and their tendency to be overwhelmed and awed by the “indescribableness” of their visions…Similarly, once Kluver got his subjects past elaborating or, even worse, explaining what they saw…” [emphasis added]. Clearly the noetic aspect of the experience is to be edited out by the “phenomenological” psychologist. Cytowic’s own example of pruning direct experience:
“In explicating MW’s description of mint, I distinguished between his factual description of curved, smooth, and cool tactile attributes, and his analogical explanation of the taste as “cool glass columns.”
For Kluver, Cytowic, and Harrison, the experiencing subjects’ data is inherently untrustworthy in some way, needing to be refined in such a way as to (conveniently) fit the categories established by the scientist for that experience. Further, when did adjectives such as cool and smooth attain such universal status? Is your smooth and my smooth the same? Are there degrees and admixtures of smooth? How does one fix as fact a word that can be used to describe wine, dance movements, and the way a pickup line is delivered? More significantly, perhaps, interpretation is assumed to be the privilege of the scientist; profound noesis, often a part of synesthetic experience, psychedelic or otherwise, is stripped from the ‘primary experience,’ denied epistemological potency, and tamed by the scientific reduction of ‘only the facts.’
The descriptive potency of natural language is put to the test in the discourses of synesthesia and psychedelics.
Hallucinogenic discourse, both of scientific and “recreational” nature, faces a similar rhetorical dilemma as the rest of the ecstatic traditions it responds to: It must report on an event which is in principle impossible to communicate. Writers of mystic experience from St Teresa to William James have treated the unrepresentable character of mystic events to be the very hallmark of ecstasies. Hallucinogenic discourse faced a similar struggle in the effort to report on the knowledge beyond what Aldous Huxley (and Jim Morrison…) described as the “doors of perception.” (Doyle)
The Noetic Connection
Jose Arguelles in his analysis of William Blake quotes the famous lines of Blake’s adopted by Huxley to describe the psychedelic visionary state:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. / For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro narrow chinks of his cavern.”
Arguelles gets to the heart of the synesthetic matter in his interpretation of this passage:
“History is the result of an overelaboration and separation of the senses. . .Blake’s vision of man’s natural condition and the condition man shall return to following the apocalyptic disclosure of the present era—is that of a psychosensory unity in which each sense is not a “narrow chink walled off from the other senses but in a state of communication with them. This state of sensory interfusion, often referred to as synesthesia, is presupposed by a consciousness in which body and soul are realized to be one, and in turn presupposes a social order so totally different from the present one that its closest approximation is to be found in the remnant of so-called primitive societies.” (Arguelles)
David Abram, following Merleau-Ponty, finds this synesthetic unity in the very nature of perception itself.
“Although contemporary neuroscientists study “synaesthesia”—the overlap and blending of the senses—as though it were a rare or pathological experience to which only certain persons are prone (those who report “seeing sounds,” “hearing colors,” and the like), our primordial, preconceptual experience, as Merleau-Ponty makes evident, is inherently synaesthetic. The intertwining of sensory modalities seems unusual to us only to the extent that we have become estranged from our direct experience (and hence from our primordial contact with the entities and elements that surround us.):
…Synaesthetic perception is the rule, and we are unaware of it only because scientific knowledge shifts the center of gravity of experience, so that we have unlearned how to see, hear, and generally speaking, feel, in order to deduce, from our bodily organization and the world as the physicist conceives it, what we are to see, hear, and feel.” (Merleau-Ponty)
Walter Pahnke, of the famous “Good Friday” experiment in the heyday of Harvard psychedelic research, describes the noetic aspect of the psychedelic experience as one of it main features, along with synesthesia:
“The Noetic Quality, as named by William James, is a feeling of insight or illumination that, on an intuitive, nonrational level and with a tremendous force of certainty, subjectively has the status of Ultimate Reality. This knowledge is not an increase of facts but is a gain in psychological, philosophical, or theological insight.”
Psychedelic Language
All language is psychedelic by definition, functioning to make manifest the mind, to bring thoughts, feelings, information, from the interior of one mind and make them available to be interiorized in another. David Porush calls this “Technologically Mediated Telepathy.” And Porush, Abram, and Erik Davis all relate the story of how this psychedelic, originally synesthetic, oral language-making connected us deeply and reciprocally to our natural environment, a mutual be-speaking that was progressively lost when writing, and most particularly alphabetic writing, froze knowledge-making into eternal signs in rows on flat surfaces, signs you could come back to—and they hadn’t changed. These signs deployed progressively deeper disconnections—among the senses, between time and space, between reason and emotion. The alphabet: the cybernetic technology that changed everything. Synesthesia, in this light, comes to stand for the promise of reconnection, of noesis, of recovery of some long lost unity, within ourselves, among ourselves, within the world. Psychedelics can deliver synesthesias with a noetic quality, at intense, supersaturated, high-bandwidth delivery rates, as well as bringing tales of new forms of language that both create and express these altered states of consciousness. Psychedelics may appeal to some deep longing for knowledge not delivered as information arranged in hierarchical tree structures, taxonomized and bowdlerized, the promiscuous metaphor and the unseemly miscegenation amongst disciplines that it encourages, excised from the “phenomenological” reports. The psychonaut’s noesis can arrive live and lively, paradoxically gesturing, zany, even alien. Terence McKenna’s accounts of the DMT self-transforming machine elves made of language dispensing unbearably high-speed, condensed blasts of pure, and extraordinarily alien gnosis, and the mushroom experiences reverberating with the logos, seen and heard in synesthetic unity, weird as they are, have been reported, in varying forms, by many others. Do the reports of synesthesias in the scientific literature of psychedelic-like weirdnesses (Richard, your name is like chocolate melting in my mouth) leaking into baseline consciousness, (strangeness usually kept in bounds by the state-bound nature of other forms of consciousness—dreaming, meditating, drugs—according to Roland Fischer’s model of mind-states) fascinate us in the same way? There are entire classes of synesthesias attached to letters and numbers, flavored and colored linguistic objects. McKenna himself comes back to these language experiences time and again in his books and lectures: new forms of language perceived, theories of the evolution of language and consciousness catalyzed by psychedelics are proposed:
“Perhaps a human language is possible in which the intent of meaning is actually beheld in three-dimensional space. If this can happen on DMT, it means it is at least, under some circumstances, accessible to human beings. Given ten thousand years and high cultural involvement in such a talent, does anyone doubt that it could become a cultural convenience in the same way that mathematics or language has become a cultural convenience?” (McKenna, p. 39.)
The LiveGlide Synestheater
My own testbed for synesthesias has been in the seven year development project of LiveGlide, a visual performance instrument based on the psychedelically informed visual language, Glide. The Synestheater, an interface within LiveGlide, allows the software coupling of the parameters of two complex artistic systems, each organized around a different sensory modality (the aural, the visual, for instance). Parameters from the visual system, LiveGlide, can be flexibly mapped to aural parameters in a composer’s MAX patch. But the mapping of aspects of the aural experience to properties of the visual experience in such a way that in performance an aesthetically satisfying experience is created is largely unexplored territory, beyond the obvious mapping of beat or amplitude in dance music to synchronized changes in the visual. Often the visual is slaved to the aural, delivering an amplified entrainment, but not necessarily exploring other inter-relations possible between sight and sound.
We have, with the advent of sophisticated technologies emerging from the Protean sorcery of the CPU, come to a point where we are building new instruments—and instruments with which to build instruments (such as MAX-MSP, Jitter, Audio Mulch, etc.)—at a much faster rate than we are learning to play them in an artistically mature manner. How many years does it take to master a musical instrument? An abstract animation technique? How can they meaningfully link? How can our perceptions be re-educated to encompass multiple sensory modalities and make magic in these unexplored, complex, subtle, infinitely variable synesthetic zones? And yet, we keep doing it, always on the verge of overwhelm, drowning or going with the flow. As Terence McKenna put it,
“Information is loose on planet three….Earth is a place where language has literally become alive.”
The cyberspirits are out of the bottle. Chiasmatics 101 is a recommended course for psychedelic journeying. And if all knowledge ultimately comes down to what we sense, what new things will we know in what new ways when we get just a little more in control, not of the waves, but of our ability to stay on our feet on the surfboard as we ride the rainbow serpent down the wave-ways into the great unknown, reached by connecting new pathways in the mind?
References
1. Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.
2. Arguelles, Jose A. The Transformative Vision: Reflections on the Nature and History of Human Expression. Berkeley and London: Shambala, 1975.
3. Cytowic, Richard E. “Synesthesia: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology, A Review of Current Knowledge.” Psyche, An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Consciousness, 2 (10), July 1995.
4. Dobkin de Rios, Marlene, and Oscar Janiger, M.D. LSD: Spirituality and the Creative Process. Rochester Vermont: Park Street Press, 2003.
5. Doyle, Richard. “LSDNA.” In Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body. Thurtle, Philip and Robert Mitchell, eds. Seattle, WA: Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, 2003.
6. Fischer, Roland. “A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States.” Science, Vol. 174, Number 4012, November, 1971.
7. Harrison, John. Synaesthesia: The Strangest Thing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
8. Kluver, Heinrich. Mescal and the Mechanism of Hallucinations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
9. Luna, Eduardo, and Pablo César Amaringo. Ayauasca Visions: The Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1991, 1993, 1999.
10. Marks, Lawrence E. “Synesthesia.” in Cardeña, Etzel; Steven Jay Lynn and Stanley Krippner, eds. Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2000.
11. McKenna, Terence. The Archaic Revival. San Francisco: Harper, 1991.
12. Munn, Henry. “The Mushrooms of Language.” From Harner, Michael J., ed. Hallucinogens and Shamanism. Orford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
13. Narby, Jeremy. The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. New York: Putnam, 1998.
14. Pahnke, Walter N. “The Psychedelic Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter With Death.” Psychedelic Review, No. 11, 1971.
15. Porush, David. “Telepathy: Alphabetic Consciousness, VR, and Postmodern Presence.” University of Warwick Conference on Virtual Futures.
16. Ternaux, Jean-Pierre. “Synesthesia: A Multimodal Combination of Senses.” Leonardo, Vol. 36, Number 4, 2003.
17. Vaults of Erowid.
(from the previous bashar blog)
Meet the Funkmeyers is a short film made for the 2008 Elevate Film Festival by Chris Bradley. Meet the Funkmeyers is the story of Jenny and Otis Funkmeyer, two kindred spirits who met on the spiritual path and decided to walk together.
The Funkmeyers are a group of people who following their excitement, moment to moment, from here to eternity.
You can be a Funkmeyer too!
Visit us at funkmeyers.com
Also, visit Elevate at elevateexperience.com
Bashar is a multi-dimensional being who speaks through channel Darryl Anka from what we perceive as the future.
Bashar explores a wide-range of subjects with great insight, humor and a profound understanding of how reality creation occurs.
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Bashar is a male member of a 5th dimensional civilization called the Essassani. This is an “informal” concentrated summary by Iasos of some of the core concepts of Bashar, based on his books “Quest for Truth” and “Bashar: Blueprint for Change” and also based on listening to many audio/video recordings of channeled evenings where Bashar responds to questions from the audience. The entire Essassani civilization is based on unconditional love, ecstasy, fun, following your excitement, being totally non-judgemental, and giving validity and equality to each individual in the society. Bashar, as experienced from the tapes of the channelings, is extremely enthusiastic – almost to the point of seeming cartoon-like! And yet he has an incredibly fast mind, an amazing wit, a loving heart, and of course a profound understanding of reality. -http://iasos.com/metaphys/bashar
Meeting With Bashar 1/19/07
I discovered Bashar one late night in December, 2006. I brought all my friends to a private session at Darryl’s house (the guy who channels Bashar) a few weeks later after I was SHOCKED and discovered that he lived in the same city as me, LA. Within 2 months this information had COMPLETELY CHANGED MY LIFE. I gave away all my possessions and tested the powers of reality “selection” (it’s a holographic universe so you don’t actually CREATE anything). Every since that point, my life has expanded in the most amazing ways.
Two films have been made about this progress and they are both pretty special: http://vimeo.com/2434635 & http://vimeo.com/2497823
I love Bashar so much and I find so much inspiration day after day, week after week, year after year from this material. I think it is the most profound information that has ever hit Earth–if you find anything better, PLEASE E-MAIL ME from our website! I tried to tell April from the start that putting videos like this on the internet would be great for spreading the information and getting people into Bashar. I’m glad to see it’s happening! To me, the BEST way to start with Bashar is this summary. I think this is the best explanation of the nature of reality that has ever been created. http://iasos.com/metaphys/bashar And me, I’m Otis Funkmeyer. Check out our website for Bashar-inspired inspiration: SHIVAI!!! (you’ll understand once you get really into Bashar) -Otis Funkmeyer – www.funkmeyers.com
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Bashar 20 yrs ago
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big love to Eddie Bravo for this
Pocahaunted – 2006 – Moccasinging CS
A1. Mother Looms
A2. Dreamtime/Machinetime
B1. Rainbow Serpant
B2. Water Moccassins
http://letitbit.net/download/d15818571605/2006—Moccasinging-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/ru/files/2tvcs3tw0
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037ee4/n/2006_-_Moccasinging_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2006 – What the Spirit Tells Me CS
A. The Waking Wind
B. And How It Carried Me Away
http://letitbit.net/download/0b580d603265/2006—What-the-Spirit-Tells-Me-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/l8svd08e9
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037eg0/n/2006_-_What_the_Spirit_Tells_Me_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – A Tear for Every Grain of Sand CS
A1. Virginal Lamb
A2. Shallow Washita
B. Bind the Blistered Feet
http://letitbit.net/download/b4233e993555/2007—A-Tear-for-Every-Grain-of-Sand-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/jroe7tzze
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037f3c/n/2007_-_A_Tear_for_Every_Grain_of_Sand_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Emerald Snake On Ruby Velvet MCDR
01. Emerald Snake on Ruby Velvet
http://letitbit.net/download/88ec8b229163/2007—Emerald-Snake-On-Ruby-Velvet-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/7cbdr15w2
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037f5h/n/2007_-_Emerald_Snake_On_Ruby_Velvet_MCDR_rar
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VA – 2007 – Hunted Gathering (Pocahaunted & Robedoor Split)
CD1
01. Robedoor – Plague of Settlers
02. Pocahaunted – Roman Nose
03. Pocahaunted – Crow Scout
04. Robedoor – Spectral Outpost
CD2
01. Robedoor – Ancestress Moon
02. Pocahaunted – Warmest Knives
03. Robedoor – Razed Terrain
04. Pocahaunted & Robedoor – Hunted Gathering
part.1
http://letitbit.net/download/cd327e686237/2007—Hunted-Gathering–Pocahaunted—Robedoor-Split-.part1.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/3f5po4ibk
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037g14/n/2007_-_Hunted_Gathering_Pocahaunted_amp_Robedoor_Split_part1_rar
part.2
http://letitbit.net/download/530a83232743/2007—Hunted-Gathering–Pocahaunted—Robedoor-Split-.part2.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/sxfgcvf9z
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037h3f/n/2007_-_Hunted_Gathering_Pocahaunted_amp_Robedoor_Split_part2_rar
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Pocahaunted & Robedoor – 2007 – Mouth Of Prayer CDR
01. Mouth Of Prayer
http://letitbit.net/download/aac258655929/2007—Mouth-Of-Prayer-CDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/zszvwljh7
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03823e/n/2007_-_Mouth_Of_Prayer_CDR_rar
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Pocahaunted & Robedoor – 2007 – Mouth Of Prayer/Bright Sea Of Singing Bowls CDR
01. Mouth Of Prayer
02. Bright Sea Of Singing Bowls
http://letitbit.net/download/40cb13152597/2007—Mouth-Of-Prayer-Bright-Sea-Of-Singing-Bowls-CDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/3xqxssoet
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a038290/n/2007_-_Mouth_Of_Prayer-Bright_Sea_Of_Singing_Bowls_CDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Native Seduction MCDR
01. Native Seduction
http://letitbit.net/download/d9f050228702/2007—Native-Seduction-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/4uczrix6x
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037h4f/n/2007_-_Native_Seduction_MCDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Pocahaunted CDR
01. War Bonnet
02. Bigiong of Rebirth
http://letitbit.net/download/a68798545643/2007—Pocahaunted-CDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/ih7pkf47o
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03800d/n/2007_-_Pocahaunted_CDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Rough Magic CS
A. Singing Color
B. Warmer Knives
http://letitbit.net/download/8e8d59622530/2007—Rough-Magic-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/ryubbtkfq
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03802a/n/2007_-_Rough_Magic_CS_rar
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VA – 2007 – Heavy Sets (Live at Echo Park) (Pocahaunted & Robedoor & Sasqrotch Split) CS
A. Pocahaunted & Robedoor – Untitled
B. Sasqrotch – Untitled
http://letitbit.net/download/961a1f652007/2007—Heavy-Sets–Live-at-Echo-Park—Pocahaunted—Robedoor—Sasqrotch-Split–CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/lq6dgzee0
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037g8a/n/2007_-_Heavy_Sets_Live_at_Echo_Park_Pocahaunted_Robedoor_&_Sasqrotch_Split_CS_rar
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VA – 2007 – Pocahaunted & Christina Carter Split LP
A1. Christina Carter – Aging
A2. Christina Carter – Death
A3. Christina Carter – Solitude
A4. Christina Carter – Dreams
B1. Pocahaunted – Sweat Lodge
B2. Pocahaunted – Silk Fog Traveler
http://letitbit.net/download/04d0a2364929/2007—Pocahaunted—Christina-Carter-Split-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/mvj5rysal
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037hb7/n/2007_-_Pocahaunted_amp_Christina_Carter_Split_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Out of a Common Bowl MCDR
01. Out Of A Common Bowl
http://letitbit.net/download/7a95cb597390/2007—Out-of-a-Common-Bowl-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/55sg327xk
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037h62/n/2007_-_Out_of_a_Common_Bowl_MCDR_rar
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VA – 2007 – Pocahaunted & Mythical Beast Split LP
A1. Mythical Beast – Gone to Grey
B1. Pocahaunted – Swayed Tongues
Bonus. Mythical Beast – In Memory of Yellow Skin
Bonus. Pocahaunted – Solitary Vigils
http://letitbit.net/download/b2818994016/2007—Pocahaunted—Mythical-Beast-Split-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/orm38q91a
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a037hg7/n/2007_-_Pocahaunted_amp_Mythical_Beast_Split_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2007 – Water-Born MCDR
01. Water-Born
http://letitbit.net/download/ba3897256725/2007—Water-Born-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/mnba5ehnt
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a038056/n/2007_-_Water-Born_MCDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Bearskin Rug MCDR
01. Bearskin Rug
http://letitbit.net/download/39ed5d9325/2008—Bearskin-Rug-MCDR.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/svss5sb5e
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03806g/n/2008_-_Bearskin_Rug_MCDR_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Beast That You Are CS
A. Untitled
B. Untitled
http://letitbit.net/download/d35983698828/2008—Beast-That-You-Are-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/320hrq5gf
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0380ac/n/2008_-_Beast_That_You_Are_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Chains LP
A1. The Weight
A2. No More Women
B1. Oh Woe
B2. Chains
http://letitbit.net/download/af342212482/2008—Chains-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/mgv3mhkgh
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03810c/n/2008_-_Chains_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Island Diamonds LP
A1. Ashes Is White
A2. Gehetto Ballet
B1. Riddim Queen
B2. Follow I
http://letitbit.net/download/898949112797/2008—Island-Diamonds-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/uux29fbub
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a038169/n/2008_-_Island_Diamonds_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Island Diamonds
01. Ashes is White
02. Ghetto Ballet
03. Riddim Queen
04. Follow I
05. Iron Shirt
06. Time Fist
http://letitbit.net/download/117a5e307965/2008—Island-Diamonds.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/gusy21yt1
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a038140/n/2008_-_Island_Diamonds_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Mirror Mics LP
A. One Another
B. Sister Calypso
http://letitbit.net/download/face07605715/2008—Mirror-Mics-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/0gf85tuu8
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0381a5/n/2008_-_Mirror_Mics_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2008 – Peyote Road LP
A. Divine Flesh
B. Heroic Doses
http://letitbit.net/download/6ebb8c942557/2008—Peyote-Road-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/b9sgpi1ex
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0381da/n/2008_-_Peyote_Road_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted & Robedoor – 2008 – Plays Berkeley CS
A. Untitled
B. Untitled
http://letitbit.net/download/6b9779119447/2008—Plays-Berkeley-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/lc1uzhapv
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0382d8/n/2008_-_Plays_Berkeley_CS_rar
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VA – 2008 – Bored Fortress (Charalambides & Pocahaunted Split) LP
A. Charalambides – Memory
B. Pocahaunted – Time Fist
http://letitbit.net/download/774a59564719/2008—Bored-Fortress–Charalambides—Pocahaunted-Split–LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/q9zw4v681
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0380ca/n/2008_-_Bored_Fortress_Charalambides_amp_Pocahaunted_Split_LP_rar
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VA – 2008 – Pocahaunted & Orphan Fairytale Split LP
A. Orphan Fairytale – Made By Mermaids
B. Pocahaunted – Warpaint
http://letitbit.net/download/66e1af594224/2008—Pocahaunted—Orphan-Fairytale-Split-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/02wcy6sij
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0381ef/n/2008_-_Pocahaunted_amp_Orphan_Fairytale_Split_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted & Tovah Olson – 2008 – Tovahaunted 1-sided LP
A1. Untitled (Tovah Olson Remix)
A2. Untitled
http://letitbit.net/download/87497d729761/2008—Tovahaunted–1-sided-LP.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/tx5w1nwoe
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0382gg/n/2008_-_Tovahaunted_1-sided_LP_rar
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Pocahaunted – 2009 – Gold Miner’s Daughters CS
A1. Hideous
A2. Sun
B. Demon
http://letitbit.net/download/7b7293345102/2009—Gold-Miner-s-Daughters-CS.rar.html
http://depositfiles.com/files/6yp8sc3dd
http://www.filefactory.com/file/a03820d/n/2009_-_Gold_Miner_s_Daughters_CS_rar
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Pocahaunted 2009- Passage LP
A1. Palm
A2. Salt
B1. Dusk
B2. Veil
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zjaynzknmli
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZBAVX6L0
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http://www.myspace.com/pocahaunted
respect and acknowledgment to itsbroodwich
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http://namemesomeonethatsnotaparasite.blogspot.com/2007/10/pocahaunted-interview.html
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
Pocahaunted Interview
Here is an interview I did with the free noise band Pocahaunted.
Pocahaunted
Pocahaunted make scary music. Music that twists and eats at your innermost fears like a plague-ridden maggot burrowing through your queasy unease. It’s all low level drones and voices from beyond the pail that clunk along in a shambolic, rootsified manor that Devandra could only dream of. It somehow sounds like some lost field recording of a bunch of Navajos subconsciously conversing with Anguta while hopped up on Mescal out in the middle of the dessert. They have been hand picked to support Thurston Moore and Sonic Youth and released a bunch of records on labels that you really should be familiar with by now like Not Not Fun and Ecstatic Peace! They currently have a split CDR with Robedoor out on the great UK label Blackest Rainbow. It scares the fuck out of me.
Where is the most haunted place you have ever been?
Bethany: My best friend in high school lived in this house, which my new age mom always suspected was haunted. Once we did this experiment where she left the house for a night with her rocking chair pushed against the wall. My mom said if the chair was in the middle of the room the next day, then we’d know a ghost moved it. Totally in the middle of the room the next day. Fucked up.
Amanda: I’ve never been anywhere haunted, I’m Jewish and we don’t go anywhere or do anything that has anything to do with the supernatural
Ok Amanada, what would you expect to see in a haunted wood that contained your greatest fears were you to find yourself in one theoretically speaking?
Amanda: I’d see Bethany wearing a Lakers jersey and dream catcher earrings. I imagine that she has been in every creepy place that there has ever been. Or I’d see my husband Britt leading a Manson-like cult of beautiful girls in white robes.
Bethany: The woods make my allergies flare up so I’d probably be hopped up on a whole bunch of Clarityin or Piriton if I was there.
How frightening on a scale of one to ten would you grade your music?
Bethany: The most fucked up, haunted sound ever is reverse talking. Thinking about it right now is making me freak out. I think our music is pretty spooky and up there with that sound. It’s like our own language of sisterhood, I can just stare into Amanda’s eyes and hear our music playing.
Amanda: It is more kind of psychedelic and woozy than straight frightening. Bethany’s voice is chamber-style dramatic and when the death metal pedal is on the mood is very heavy. We also insist on playing in 90 degree heat for optimum crazed sweatiness.
What are your favourite Disney movies?
Bethany: The Little Mermaid. That is where I get all my vocal cues. I’m also into Cruella DeVille because she’s wicked bad and my hair used to look like that.
Amanda: I’m more into live action stuff. The Parent Trap and Pollyanna. Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty could be Bethany’s replacement, she’s hot and cruel. I could definitely drone out with anyone from the animated Robin Hood, those dudes are just all soul.
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http://larecord.com/interviews/2008/03/14/fri-mar-14-pocahaunted-interview
FRI., MAR. 14: POCAHAUNTED INTERVIEW
March 14th, 2008
Pocahaunted is working on a dub record and has an art installation as part of Three Burritos at Tiny Creatures later this month. Amanda and Bethany speak to us about sea creatures, child acting and Senegalese funk.
What was it like playing for a class of third graders?
Bethany: It was amazing and weird.
Amanda: The Q&A was them asking us like ‘What kind of songs do you like?’ And us sitting there in dead silence trying to think of radio hits.
B: We’d be like, ‘You like Stevie Wonder?’ And they’d be like ‘…’ ‘What about the Rolling Stones?’ And two kids would raise their hands. They were like, ‘Do you like Souljah Boy?’
A: I realized how blissfully unaware we are of everything popular.
B: I like to pride myself in thinking I know what’s going on on the radio. In my car, my tape player is broken, so I’m like, ‘Oh, cool, I’ll listen to Star 98.7,’ and then switch to the classic rock station—
What’s the best experience you ever shared with the radio?
A: Any time Marcy Playground’s ‘I Love Sex And Candy’ comes on, it makes me really happy.
B: I’m obsessed with Billy Joel. I just saw him play last night. A beer was $9 and the pizza was just a piece of cheese with literally no dough—just cheese hanging off. It was amazing. It was all 40-year-old drunk women, and one kissed my hand like ‘I love you!’ Awesome.
What was the most constructive comment you got from the third-graders?
B: They drew all these drawings for us—
A: —while listening to our music. Their teacher is a big fan of ours. During art time, he’d play our record and sort of insist they draw something inspired by what they hear. They said we were scary Halloween music. They drew us monsters and alligators.
B: One was a haunted house and a ghost, and the caption on the ghost says ‘YOU CANNOT SEE ME.’ And one kid gave us a note: ‘YOUR BAND RULED. AND THE SONG.’
A: I think they were utterly confused. But so are adults.
B: I have a huge pottymouth, so I felt like I had to be really careful—like if I said anything in front of these kids, it’d go down on my permanent record.
A: She’s two seconds from saying ‘fuck’ any moment of the day. And then we went back to playing shows for hipsters—we were like, ‘Whew! Narrow escape!’
What was it like opening for Mike Watt and Thurston Moore on Halloween in Visalia?
B: The car we took up there broke down. Our friend Bobb [Bruno] who records us and plays drums for us a lot—it was his car and the speedometer just said DONE. So he pulls over and we’re in the middle of these vineyards, and we’re like ‘We have to go to the bathroom!’ And then a cop comes…
A: And apparently it’s a federal offense to pee in a vineyard? So we’re running through the vineyard—and my pee makes wine better anyway! I pee in everyone’s wine—not a big deal. But at that point, we thought for sure we were not getting to the show. The car was done and we were done.
B: We called Thurston and he was like, ‘It’s fine—you guys will make it.’ So we called a tow truck and we were towed—
A: —and we were in the car as they were towing us, which is illegal.
B: We were in the back seat taking shots of Jack Daniels, like ‘We might die, so we might as well be relaxed.’ And they dropped us off and another guy and his girlfriend towed us to Visalia, and they were listening to crazy screamo music and the Silversun Pickups, and we were like, ‘We know this band…’
A: We wanted to seem glamorous. And we were like, ‘Hey, we’re opening for Sonic Youth.’
B: And they were like ‘…’ We did sound check in like four seconds then ran to the bathroom and threw on our costumes.
A: We were playing in one of those weird pizza parlor sports bars in front of giant Budweiser flags, and I would never by any means call us high art, but we’re definitely not Budweiser-flag art.
B: We sat at the merch table and made little pouches of candy corn—we also like to think we’re a stand-up duo, so we wrote little jokes and make a hundred of the things with our own hands, and we could not give them away.
A: Everyone in Visalia was worried about getting fat from candy corn. I realized I was yelling at people: ‘You’re not gonna get fat! What are you, on a diet? It’s Halloween! Take the candy!’ Thurston took a few and was like, ‘Candy corn is awesome.’
B: And then he just left it on the table. He didn’t want it. And Thurston introduced us to Watt, who immediately started talking about San Pedro. We were like, ‘We know.’
A: He was wearing the most high-waisted jeans I’ve ever seen. And a flannel. He was probably the hippest person there.
B: He looked good.
A: In an utterly clueless lumberjack way.
What happened to Bobb’s car?
B: We left it there, and Bobb actually finally went up there—it was no longer done!
A: We’re really into playing for people that aren’t what we would consider regular fans of avant-garde experimental music. But there’s always very nervous energy when people are there to see rock or a standing performance—with traditional instruments and traditional structure—because we play one piece.
B: A lot of times we finish playing and people are waiting—no, that’s it! We have one song!
A: It makes people sort of vicious.
B: We did a little mini-tour and played this art gallery for I guess only ten minutes, but when you’re in the moment, it feels a lot longer, and apparently the cops came—
You attract a lot of cops.
A: I got pulled over by a cop that thought I was a prostitute.
How did they bring that up?
A: I had like fur coats and lipstick and I was on the west side by the Standard and I have a 17-year-old in my car, and they were like, ‘Honey, have you been drinking tonight?’ ‘Well, he’s having an Arizona Iced Tea and I’m having Kombucha.’ So anyway the cops came and that’s why people thought we had a second song. They were like, ‘We’re so bummed you had to stop early.’ And we were like, ‘Yeaaaaaahhhhh….’
You should call the cops on all your shows.
A: I’d prefer to call the firefighters.
B: We talk fast and we’re always screaming really loud—we have a joke that people probably hear our music and are like, ‘When are these bitches gonna shut up?’
Who came up with the Mary Kate and Ashley of drone idea?
B: Bobb. Bobb and I are both REALLY into the Olsen twins.
What does it mean to be REALLY into the Olsen twins?
B: They’re just kind of amazing. I always check the fansites to see what they’re wearing. Bobb had a thing where he was like ‘You’re Ashley and Amanda is Mary Kate.’
Is one the good one and one the bad one?
B: They’re both good. But Ashley wears more classy things, and Mary Kate is daring—she’s definitely a risk-taker.
Have you tried to make contact?
B: I’m pretty sure they would hate us.
A: But if you’re on drugs you like us no matter what. I feel like it doesn’t matter what kind of drugs you’re on. Music for people to take appetite suppressants to.
Taking appetite suppressants to make music to take appetite suppressants to?
B: We try to be the healthier version of Spacemen 3. With better teeth.
What’s in the filing cabinet of clippings that you use to make your collages?
B: Books and National Geographics, and we just talk and cut stuff out.
A: We have a gallery exhibit at Tiny Creatures in March, so we’ve been doing a ton of stuff for that.
What’s the best source material besides National Geographic?
A: Go to any Vogue and cut out diamonds.
B: Diamonds and fur.
A: I’m Jewish, so I think everything about diamonds is amazing. I’m really into being Jewish so I make these really bold statements like ‘Jews hate that,’ and then like five Jewish people ask me, ‘Why did you say that?’ But I think I’m really qualified to say what Jews like and don’t like. I said ‘Jews hate slurpees’ and a woman turned around and said, ‘I’m Jewish and I don’t hate slurpees.’ ‘Well, you’re not really Jewish then!’ But you don’t say that. Anyway, Jews love diamonds. Do Italians like diamonds?
B: Italians like gold.
A: Just fancy stuff.
B: We get into weird magazines. Weird books at the thrift store. Like a set where every book is weird: weird forest creatures, psychic connections, stuff like that.
What’s the weirdest animal in nature?
A: Is there any animal that’s not fucked up?
Dogs?
A: When you spend time with a dog, it’s like, ‘No, you’re so weird!’
B: We both hate the ocean. Any sea creature is just wrong. It’s the scariest thing on earth.
A: It’s like being jettisoned into outer space. Why would you wanna go floating through space? What if I was snorkeling and a dolphin went by and touched my leg? I’d throw up in my mouth!
Did you hear about the giant prehistoric sea scorpion?
B: Yes!
A: I’m glad I haven’t heard of that. I’m into babies. There’s really only room in my heart for one thing.
What’s the scariest thing on earth?
B: I hate the ocean, I hate silent films, I hate backwards talking. Silent films because I know everyone in them is dead, and that makes me feel weird. I’m taking an early film class and it’s such torture. The first two-and-a-half-weeks were all silent. Lumiere and Chaplin—kill me now!
What’s the heart of your set of effects pedals?
A: We’re created on the basic principle of voice and vision. Bethany is the voice and I’m the vision, and when Bethany is just in the most clear free like… zen state and her voice is just coming out, it just trumps anything—it’s the pure beauty of what we have to offer. And that’s why we don’t know much about our equipment. I barely know how to work a single pedal—put reverb on and some delay and then Bethany—give her a smart water, turn her back to the crowd and you’re gonna get something like Mariah! I’m like, ‘Give me Mariah tonight, baby!’ I spend most of the time like ‘Let’s use these instruments, or these are the new directions we should go in.’ When you play the same song over and over—a singular piece without a verse or chorus—you need to introduce elements that make you seem like you’re not trying to create the same thing. We know what works for us, and it’s better for us to challenge ourselves. Who wants to hear two girls singing the same vocal pattern and the same chord progression every month for years?
B: That’s definitely true. She’ll call me like ‘I have this awesome idea!’ And I’m like, ‘Fine, whatever.’
A: You’re the talent! You can’t be bothered. And I have no talent. One time I hit a note that harmonized. And she said, ‘Amanda, you’re harmonizing!’ Which—let’s just say—is rare.
How did you first find each other?
A: As a child, Bethany was one of those little show babies—
Like in TV commercials?
B: Definitely—a child actor.
A: Like Annie in Annie! But Bethany’s ex-boyfriend is a friend of ours, and expressed to me that she wanted to get back into music, but doesn’t want to go back to pop sensibilities. So we talked one night—and I run Not Not Fun, so all I deal with is underground sensibilities—and I said ‘If you wanna get back into music, we can do a project.’ We weren’t even friends then.
B: We went in the studio in their house and played a song and made it a routine thing—every Sunday we practiced.
A: Initially Bethany was like ‘This isn’t beautiful enough’ and I’d be like ‘This isn’t weird enough.’ Now it’s instinctive that Bethany brings a certain amount of beauty and I fuck it up—that’s good! Bring on the beauty—bring it on! And let me fuck it up! Now we’re like sisters—really close—we make all the decisions together. A two-person band is a blessing. The fighting stops pretty short.
Which recording is the definitive Pocahaunted recording?
A: Bethany and I have such a morphing sensibility that we tend to like things very quickly and at the time be very into them, and as time goes on—that recording we love doesn’t really hold up. Maybe what we did in March isn’t as potent now. It’d be really hard to put together a best-of. Maybe just a Billy Joel covers album.
B: I’m really trying to push for that. We discussed maybe trying to do a cover song, but we don’t have lyrics in our songs. It’d be fucked up if the only song we ever had lyrics to was a cover—but what would we cover? Maybe if we cover a Ramones song. Might be cool.
A: We only play two notes anyway. We got that Rockaway Beach kind of vibe.
What’s the next recording going to be?
A: Our dub album is coming out. Appetite suppressant music.
That’s awesome you make people not want to eat.
B: I used to work in this restaurant and a girl said to me, ‘What size are you? You must be a size 12!’ ‘I’m not that big.’ ‘I don’t believe you! Step on the scale!’ So we always say ‘step on the scale.’ And so as long as our music makes one person not want to eat…
What are the parameters of your dream project?
A: Honestly, getting the people that played with Paul Simon on Graceland. If we had a million African percussionists and drummers and back-up singers. Just like Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense. Amazing Senegalese funk.
B: And also a gospel choir.
A: Totally a gospel choir through so much delay.
B: I’m about ready to go sit outside a Baptist church, like ‘Can I get two of you to do a track?’
A: We’re so into studio musicians—we want so many strangers at the top of their game, making us sound like we’re amazing!
B: I’d also be into an orchestra—L.A. Philharmonic!
So you want total numerical superiority.
A: When you roll deep with four hundred people, you’re a force to be reckoned with.
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http://www.tinymixtapes.com/Pocahaunted
The Olsen Twins of Drone
[June 2008]
The other day took me from a positively gray day at the office to an art gallery opening. I walked up the stairs toward the gallery, surprised by its astonishing brightness. Apparently, the artist had put in especially bright fluorescent bulbs himself. I mean, walking into an art opening is usually bright enough — all white walls and people everywhere — but this light was blinding. My friend Shea eventually walked up the stairs too and met me outside, headphones in ears, all wide-eyed, and in some sort of trance. He stopped about a foot in front of me before realizing where he was. “What are you listening to, Shea?” I asked. As I suspected from his pale demeanor, distant glances, and the general returning-home-from-a-vision-quest vibe that he was giving off, he was listening to Island Diamonds, a recent LP by LA two-piece Pocahaunted. (I loaned him the album the day before.) From tepees to white-walled rooms with this sprawling murky dubby stuff as his soundtrack, I understood both his confusion and his elation.
Bethany and Amanda comprise Pocahaunted. Most of Pocahaunted’s music has been in the murkier, ambient sort of school of primitive experimentalism, but Island Diamonds is all druggy tribal rhythms and hypnotic dub jams, drenched in a grimey sort of reverb that smacks of the desert in a major Alejandro Jodorowsky kind of way. They’re El Topo on the streets of California, but they’re hard to pin down, extremely prolific, and always trying something new. They’ve now got several releases out on the likes of Not Not Fun (which Amanda co-runs), Ecstatic Piece, Arbor, Night People, and several more. I talked to Amanda and Bethany about a couple of their new records, Los Angeles, their recording processes, and Patrick Dempsey.
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So, did you guys just have band practice?
Amanda: We’re about to go in and record our album for Teardrops called Chains. Teardrops is Cali Dewitt’s amazing label that has put out such famers as No Age, No Age, and No Age.
Cool, I did an interview with Randy Randall last week. I’m really digging on their new record.
Bethany: Cool, where was Dean? I saw him at Target last week, probably during your interview.
Dean was in Target yeah. Maybe, probably. Anyway, what’s the deal with a new album? Do you have anything in mind for this one, if Island Diamonds was your self-proclaimed ‘dub record’?
A: We have one coming out in a few weeks on Weird Forest that has more of a “tribal soul” feel, and we just finished one for Troubleman which is like our “dark raga” album. It’s very schizophrenic around here. Tonight’s session will be “Pocahaunted does Tom Tom Club.” Cross your fingers for us.
I’ve been so obsessed with Tom Tom Club lately.
A: They’re the greatest.
That’s kind of a lot of albums you’re putting out though!
B: I’m about to move to New York, so we’re trying to get as much done as possible. Is it too much? Let me know when it’s too much.
It’s never enough. How do you guys work though? What’s your recording process? Do you often just jam and lay it down to tape?
A: Yeah, you nailed it; no practicing, just one take wonders.
Wow okay. Even on Island Diamonds?
B: Yeah, that one we just did one take, but Bobb Bruno worked his ass off
Yikes. I guess I thought it would’ve been more mapped out, maybe because it’s way more clear and direct than something like Hunted Gathering.
B: The concept of those albums are completely different. Hunted Gathering is supposed to have more of a free-flow vibe, and we tried to make the beats super focused for Island Diamonds.
I was thinking how well your sound works in a dub sort of form.
A: Dub is awesome; it was really inspiring for us during the time we were recording. I would just wake up and do the dishes to weird Soul Jazz box sets, and my husband Britt bought endless rare imports that Pete from Yellow Swans would suggest for us, and then there was the Lee Scratch Perry biography….
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“We really like to pride ourselves on being a band that changes.”
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Awesome. Those Soul Jazz compilations are terrific, eh? A lot of that super old vintage-y dub has kind of a spooky feel to it. A different spooky to you guys, but it makes sense with your sound I think.
A: God — rich, esoteric, white British men know what’s up, right? We should be on Soul Jazz.
Totally. So, is Chains going to be the tribal soul one?
B: No, that’s Mirror Mics. Chains is the pop Tom Tom stuff.
Is it quite dark, still?
B: Yeah, I mean… no. No, it’s like reggae pop with great jazzy wandering vocals.
Hmm, okay.
A: Noooooo, it’s really a Talking Heads Stop Making Sense ‘home’ thing. We’re not dark people, and we’re not spooky. We like to move and be moved; we like to dance and feel rhythmic. This just reflects that.
Yeah it seems obvious that you guys aren’t dark people; there seems to be a good sense of humor that comes with it. The stuff I’ve been reading always describes your music as quite scary/spooky. Would you say you agree with that at all?
B: Maybe because it’s a people’s projection thing. Like, we’re connected to great drone psychedelic music — and we’re proud of that — but we always want to be slipping in weird beats or pop into it. We get kind of spooky.
A: I mean, if you’re alone, listening and watching the eyes of Laura Mars on mute with us playing in the background… yeah, then we’re spooky for sure
Yeah, I know what you mean. Actually I was finding Hunted Gathering to be actually quite bright, as I was listening to it before. But maybe because the sun’s out in this afternoon.
A: I think it’s hopeful, sure.
You seem to like to dress it up a bit as well, making this mythology or mystique to go with the band. This general aesthetic you’ve got going on seems quite assured.
B: Our aesthetic is really important to us. If we were just our band making music and putting it out there with no mystique, we’d be utterly forgettable and boring. Our art helps us, like our personalities help us.
A: Also, we’re women, and so I think to not rest on the weird laurels of Bethany’s beautiful goddess voice, we want a bit of spook or mystery. Sometimes I think we’re performance art.
Yeah definitely. There’s a reasonably fine line between the distinction between music and sound art or performance art. With the aesthetic — the vision quest kind of native Indian vibe you have going on — I was wondering if you have any personal connections with the native Indian culture or anything like that?
B: Nah, I took a few native anthropology courses and got really into the culture, rituals, imagery… We have drawn some of our song titles and art from what I’ve learned, but we’re trying to move away from ‘moccasins’ or the pun of our band name.
A: Native Americans have amazing traditions, and their storytelling rituals through chanting are absolutely mesmerizing and something we would love to emulate. But now I don’t know. Now I guess we’re into Africa, haha. Northern Africa at this exact moment.
Which I guess could have connotations of the tribal or the innate. It seems like you guys are pretty into that.
B: I think we just aim to have a final product that is somewhat modern-sounding mixed with something tribal- and antique-sounding. In our personal lives, we both listen to mostly older music, so I think we tend to draw from what it is we listen to. We both have very eclectic tastes in what we listen to, which essentially is the reason we “change” so much. We have so many influences and so many things we want to try. We really like to pride ourselves on being a band that changes.
It seems boring not to — I mean, me personally, I change everyday, there’s so much stuff out there!
A: Seriously! And it’s not cool to be like ‘no good music was made after 1975,’ but sometimes it’s only your own personal influences and inspirations that keep you making music. There is great stuff out there, but we like what we like I guess!
I was thinking that there’s definitely some new age kind of vibe about your music and image too. Like ancient stuff translated into a modern voice.
B: I’m into Enya and Yoga; maybe it’s me who brings that to the table.
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“We like to move and be moved; we like to dance and feel rhythmic.”
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Yeah, Bethany I was reading somewhere that you have a really new age mom.
B: Yeah she’s pretty out there. She has this weird crystal that she asks questions to, and she seriously takes its advice. She is also really into spiritual healing. She also claims she can sense spirits, so she’s kind of like a ghost hunter. She’s into past lives.
Oh, wow. Does she like your music?
B: Yeah, she really likes it. Both of my parents are really supportive of what I choose to do, and they both really enjoy the band. I think they are kind of confused by it, but they’re still into it.
Cool. It seems like the sort of thing parents would think was really weird.
B: The weird thing is, most of the people who I would imagine to think something like ‘this is totally fucked’ are really supportive and into it.
I was working at this office job for a couple of weeks, and I was listening to stuff like you guys — as well as this Heather Leigh Murray record a lot and other noise stuff — and thinking that if the other people here heard what I was listening to, they’d think I was real wacky or something.
A: My parents think it’s totally weird. It’s weird and it isn’t. Sometimes you forget that the rest of the world isn’t listening to Double Leopards and Blues Control. I think we’re the least weird of all of it, and that’s certainly true. Sometimes I even hear serious melodies and harmonies in our music! That’s not weird, but moms… they’re into Pink Floyd and Peter Allen, so…
B: To be honest, sometimes I think we’re kind of weird. But I think that because we have this really lulling, underlying beautiful vibe hidden underneath a lot of other stuff. It can be appealing to variety of people.
Well, its certainly a long way from the mainstream. Do you feel like that’s the case for your everyday lives too?
A: Not exactly the margin, haha. Okay, it’s more like our personalities are strange, and definitely when we get together, the strangeness comes out. We’re very crazy together, and that makes our music “out” and special, I think.
Do you interact with mainstream culture much? Like TV, movies, music, or whatever?
B: Oh, we are only mainstream culture. We went to see Made of Honor last week. We’re both really into TV and celebrities, and seriously, the Olsen twins. Well, at least I am really into them — Amanda is more into British models.
Oh, rad. I saw Patricky Dempsey on The Late Show the other day, and for some reason, it really made me want to go see that film. But yeah, The Olsen Twins of Drone thing… it seems to make a lot of sense, but I’m not sure why. Do you know?
B: The Olsen Twins of Drone is a joke from Bobb stemming from the fact that one of us looks like a fancy and one of us looks like a crazy, and we drink a lot of tea and talk a lot of shit and hang out together. And then we play drone music, see?
Cool.
A: I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Do you ever find music to be a bit of a boy’s club?
B: I think that this style of music can sometimes be looked at as a “boy’s club.” I have joked before that Amanda and I are making music in a scene filled with “dirty boys.” I think that we just roll with it though; there are also some really amazing female musicians in this “scene.” Inca Ore, Christina Carter, etc.
Yeah, DIY scenes always seem filled with grungy boys
A: Our fans are mostly men, for sure — at least at our shows. And yes, our bandmates are mostly men. But so many women make music in every single genre too. We chose this one because it fits our wants and needs as musicians, not because we wanted to make any particular statement about women in the noise/drone scene. We’re lucky to be with Christina [Carter] and Liz [Grouper]; we’re big fans of theirs, but they’re not amazing because they’re women — they’re women and they’re amazing.
Oh, definitely. Another thing I was wondering about was how you got into making this music, and if you had training in any instruments or anything?
B: My dad is a musician, and I have grown up around music for my entire life. I grew up doing musical theater and took opera lessons, as well as guitar and piano. I’m not a musical genius or anything, but I do have some sort of [musical] background. Amanda and I just came together because I voiced to her my want to make music, but not the kind I had been making in my younger years.
A: I can’t play anything or do anything really. I was a playwriting major, and other than that, I dunno. I’m excellent at puzzles.
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on 05-28-2009 –>
http://globecat.blogspot.com/2008/08/aleatory-10-pocahaunted.html
8.01.2008
ALEATORY #10: Pocahaunted
Pocahaunted scares children.
Earlier this year, Amanda and Bethany played for a class of third graders, who described their sound as “scary Halloween music.” It’s not a bad description: their blend of drone, psychedelia and Native American music, full of reverb and foreboding, would make a great soundtrack to a haunted house. Remarkably prolific (their website lists well over 20 releases, often in runs of 100 or less), they are atmospheric in the good way, haunting without coming across as dark or gloomy, and of course, charming to talk to. The ladies of Pocahaunted:
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5. Favorite piece of equipment?
Amanda: Delay and reverb pedal.
Bethany: Holy Grail reverb pedal. I’d be nothing without one.
9. Favorite song to start (or end) a mixtape with?
Amanda: “Umi Says,” by Mos Def.
Bethany: “Gold Dust Woman,” Fleetwood Mac.
14. Favorite sound?
Amanda: Sax solos.
Bethany: The fan in my room blowing right at me when it’s 400 degrees with 99.9% humidity.
20. Favorite new band?
Amanda: White Magic
Bethany: Vivian Girls.
22. Favorite vice?
Amanda: Dark chocolate.
Bethany: Mike’s Hard Cranberry Lemonade.
23. Favorite natural oddity?
Amanda: Unibrows and lisps.
Bethany: Cats with thumbs.
25. Favorite historical figure?
Amanda: Queen Elizabeth and Nixon.
Bethany: Bruce Springsteen.
49. Now that you know a much larger audience will get to hear the music you’ve made, has your writing changed at all? How? What’s changed and what’s stayed the same?
Amanda: I’m always like to Bethany, “Oh man, in that last review they really didn’t like this or that, we’ve got to grow or move away from our previous songs…” But you can’t think like that, the writing should only change because we change and our influences change, and we try to stay true to that. I think we’ve gotten more sophisticated in our recording, with more collaborations with other amazing musicians, and that always morphs and improves our sound. But Bethany’s voice is our rock and it’s what makes us Pocahaunted, so that will never change. I’m just trying to get her to go off even more insane, deeper, crazier, with more soul, and more intensity. And she always brings it.
60. What’s the worst show you’ve ever played? What would you have done different?
Amanda: Our worst show was at Echo Curio, when we played with our friend Jonathan. He was amazing, and the sounds he was making were totally beautiful but Bethany’s amp was malfunctioning like crazy and feeding back, and I think we played for about six minutes. It was low… but when it was over we laughed. Like we genuinely laughed and hugged and got over it, so maybe that’s not so bad after all.
61. What’s the best advice you could give to a young, upstart band?
Amanda: Work hard and be sick and epic, I’d say. But I’d always say work hard, be sick and epic about anything. If you stay away from weird music trends and make yr own music then who cares if you don’t get the recognition right away or ever? If they like punk and yr making experimental drone, keep on keeping on. If they like experimental drone and yr making experimental drone, then enjoy it while it lasts. And of course, work with the best people you can. They’ll only make you sound better and go deeper.
Bethany: Move to Brooklyn.
65. Ever see yourself penning the score/soundtrack to a TV show or film?
Amanda: When we write a great song and we know it, like we hear it back and look at each other like, “oh yeah” — we always joke, oh just the perfect score for Last of the Mohicans 2. But it’s changing now, we’re trying to get more soulful… maybe like the soundtrack to an awesome movie about sad shit and redemption…
Bethany: The Sopranos movie.
70. What is a personal belief you hold that you would fight for to the death?
Amanda: My own aesthetics. And love, duh.
Bethany: Never eat mayonnaise.
72. A few years ago, Beck gave an interview for SPIN in which he lamented the glut of reality TV shows and blogs about musicians, wanting to know less details about their life because he felt they were more mysterious that way (he liked to envision Devo as living in a crazed art-deco pyramid when he was young, instead of just some guys in a tour bus). Do you feel that there’s a lack of mystique out there for musicians in today’s YouTube age? Do you feel your band carries any mystique?
Bethany: I guess it makes sense that there would be a total lack of mystique for this reason, but I am totally into YouTube—so I don’t really worry about it. Pocahaunted doesn’t seem to end up on the Internet as much, unless it’s links to my personal Flickr site—so I think we are doing pretty good at keeping up the mystique.
Amanda: There’s no mystique. My husband Britt used to be like, “I love that band, you can’t even email them… they don’t even exist on the Internet, it’s amazing.” We still get into that and get siked on it, then it comes time to email that band and it’s like, oh shit, you can’t even email those dudes. It’s hard to stay mysterious when being out there comes with Flickr account pics, and YouTube videos, and Myspace comments… I hope we have a mystique, but we ruin everything when we speak. It’s all jokes and Sopranos references. Not so strange at all.
77. What was the hardest part about recording your current release?
Amanda: Raising ourselves to the highest level. Each release has to be just a bit better or stranger or cooler than the last one for us. I get so stressed and go crazy over every song, and Bethany just trusts our performance and relaxes. Working with Bobb Bruno and Cameron Stallones is so dope, though. So there’s a lot of trust there.
Bethany: I think just the timing. I was about to move, and was trying to finish up my last semester at school in LA—and Amanda was working hard on Crops and Rawbers stuff, and trying to leave her job… so we both had a lot on our minds, and were pretty stressed out… but we finished it, so I guess stress doesn’t matter now.
80. Worst run-in with the law (to date)?
Bethany: The time Amanda and I got yelled at for peeing in a vineyard.
Amanda: The cops yelled at us because we tried to pee in a vineyard on the way to our Halloween show opening up for Thurston. We were totally late, had to pee of course, and didn’t realize it was illegal. Which led to my famous (not so famous) quote, “Whatever, I pee in everyone’s wine, it’s fine.”
81. If you could sync an album of yours to a movie (like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz), what movie would it be?
Amanda: Probably some James McAvoy movie. We love him.
Bethany: The Dark Knight.
83. Have you ever thought of pulling a Jack White-styled Raconteurs/White Stripes thing and be in multiple bands at once? If so, what would the other band sound like?
Amanda: Bethany’s would probably sound more beautiful than anything in the world (Enya meets Kate Bush meets Mazzy Star) and mine would just be straight up afro funk or stupid acid jazz. Or we’d probably just try to hang around with rappers and hope someone would let us sing the hook.
Bethany: Yeah, I’m down. I’d like to be in a really poppy band that just sounds like The Beach Boys. Amanda would probably hate it.
84. Most disappointing concert you ever attended?
Amanda: Kraftwerk at Coachella. It was like a car commercial. Straight up.
Bethany: I don’t know. It wasn’t Billy Joel, that’s for sure.
94. What’s your hardest song to replicate live?
Amanda: We can’t replicate any of them. We can’t replay any of them. So I guess, all of them.
100. Even with the gradual decay of the B-side, most artists still have vaults of unreleased songs. What’s in yours?
Amanda: So many weird live sets with different awesome friend musicians. And a few songs that I was like, no no no not good enough for the album. It gets shelved, and then Britt just archives it for us in case we get wistful one night and re-listen and go, ooohhhhhhh yeah.
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http://visitationsmusic.blogspot.com/2009/02/interview-with-pocahaunteds-bethany.html
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Pocahaunted: An Interview with Bethany Cosentino
Bethany Cosentino is one half of Los Angeles duo Pocahaunted (with Amanda Brown), known for their long, spooky, and almost meditative drone compositions. Their music is both calming and foreboding, often simultaneously, and can feel like being lullabyed into a nightmare-filled sleep. Amid war drums, lulling guitar, and howling voices, Pococaunted always seem to be beating, guiding, and gathering towards some sonic place, a place where we’ll probably never arrive. But if we can’t know where Pocahaunted are going, we can at least find out where they come from.
Alexander Frank: Can you tell me a little bit about your progression from more standard songwriting to the drone and noise of Pocahaunted? I know that before Pocahaunted, not so long ago, you wrote songs with lyrics and bridges and choruses and all that. So how and when did you make the transition something more discordant?
I was really kind of bored with traditional songwriting, and when Amanda approached me and asked me to start a band with her, we had no real concept in mind of what the music would sound like. Coming from a strong musical background, I figured I would go in there and attempt to construct something, but when the two of us came together, the Pocahaunted sound just happened. And we never questioned it or tried to throw a label on it, we just played the music that came to us, and came out of us. It was only later that people started to call us a “drone” band.
AF: Does genre mean anything to Pocahaunted? What would you label yourselves if you had to?
Well, like I said before, I think we play the music we play because it’s just what kind of comes out. Amanda and I have completely different tastes in music, and neither one of us really even listens to “drone” bands, so I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s important to us to be categorized as a drone band. We make the music we make because it is somehow inspired by our varying tastes, and it just so happens that the mash-up of all these cross genres creates this droney, blissed-out music.
AF: Can you talk a little bit about those influences? The drone and noise influences are obvious, but I also hear the 20th century diva. Your voice is Buffy-Saint Marie, Elizabeth Fraser, and Mariah Carey rolled into one! Can you talk about some divas that inspire Pocahaunted? I hear Patsy Cline, too. Am I crazy?
Well obviously, I am all about the Diva. Amanda and I kind of joke around that we are both divas, but honestly, it’s not a joke. We are loud, and demanding, and we require a lot of attention. But we are also really, really inspired by a lot of female musicians, and I think it’s pretty clear in our music. I think there is a real feminine quality to the songs, and I think even without the layers of female vocals, the music itself portrays a very feminine vibe. I am really inspired by Elizabeth Fraser, which I think is pretty obvious. I also love, love, love Patsy Cline, so the comparison is amazing. I’m inspired by a lot of female soul singers from the 60s and 70s like Irma Thomas, Doris Duke, and, of course, Aretha Franklin. We’re both also really into Nina Simone, and other women of jazz.
AF: Just knowing you as a friend, your personality seems so divergent from the sounds on your records. You’re so talkative and verbal and present in person, but on record you sound sort of distant, far away, nonverbal, in a sense. Do you become someone different when you’re recording and performing?
I don’t think I act any different when recording or performing. Amanda has a hard time getting me to act “seriously” on stage. I think she takes it more seriously than I do from a performance standpoint. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am into it—but for me it’s harder, because I’m the one playing the guitar, and carrying the song, so I get a little nervous and I try to concentrate a lot. We recently started playing with a more basic band, so it’s easier for me now to ease up and put the guitar down at some point. And when I do that, I feel like I have more room to get into the performance.
AF: What’s the process of writing and creating a Pocahaunted song or album? How much do you have planned out and how much just happens during the recording process?
Basically what happens is Amanda and I will brainstorm ideas, meaning, we will say “we want this album to sound like…”, and then we throw out some insane jargon like “Talking Heads meets Cocteau Twins thrown into a blender after smoking a lot of weed”. We basically don’t write songs. I come up with a pretty simple guitar riff, and then we add on top of that. Most of our albums have concepts behind them though, and we go into them hoping that we will come across a certain way for a particular album. We have really tried to grow and change with each release, and I think our personal influences show through a lot more in the later albums than in any of the earlier stuff we released.
AF: One last question. What’s the best time of day to listen to a Pocahaunted album? Morning? Afternoon? Night, after a long day of work? Right before you go to bed?
At night, I guess…Yeah, at night. When it’s most spooky out. And kinda foggy. And close to some mountains, or maybe the ocean. Yeah: listen to us at night in nature.
Interview by Alex Geoffrey Frank
eh
fanmade teaser trailer
http://marketsaw.blogspot.com/2009/03/major-avatar-set-piece-details-see.html
http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/10/29/jon-favreau-calls-james-camerons-avatar-the-future
Jon Favreau Calls James Cameron’s Avatar ‘The Future’
October 29, 2008
Source: Ain’t It Cool News
by Alex Billington
Jon Favreau is another filmmaker who has really solidified his place in the cinematic world in directing Iron Man earlier this year. He’s returning for Iron Man 2, which is a relief, but looking towards the future, the door is open for so much more. Instead of dwelling on Iron Man 2, though, Quint from Ain’t It Cool News talked with Favreau in a recent interview about nearly everything else besides the sequel. And one area I was particularly interested in was his thoughts on James Cameron’s Avatar, since he’s one of the lucky few who has seen a few finished scenes from the film. “He’s trying to present this format in a way where it is a game-changer and in seeing it I think it’s the future,” Favreau explains.
We’ve been covering Avatar very closely for the last year, publishing nearly every last interview that Cameron has done. However, we still haven’t seen a single photo or anything from the film yet, but Favreau has. “I really liked the bits that I saw and I saw all the various stages of finished [footage], but he’s a purist in the way he approaches things, and he’s very meticulous.” Favreau jumps into explaining how Cameron “likes to put on a big show” and strive for cinematic revolution. “He’s really pushing the boundaries on motion capture, he’s integrating live action with motion capture and CGI. It takes a painstaking technical approach to that. And he really wants to make it a very visceral, emotional experience.”
“He’s sort of tireless in how much he invests into it as far as his time and effort. You know, he doesn’t make a lot of movies, so a lot of thought and effort goes into each one. And I think that he’s trying to present this format in a way where it is a game-changer and in seeing it I think it’s the future. I don’t think it’s a flash in the pan. I think it’s going to open up a whole new door and I think more so than the glasses it becomes about how many screens could actually present it in its pristine form.”
“The amount of screens is just growing at a very, very fast rate in the States and I think in Europe as well and I think Avatar is going to be the kind of movie that’s an event that you have to go see and you want to see again just to understand what you’re looking at. And then you still have his very effective storytelling. He really creates an adventure and draws you into it in the hero’s journey sense of storytelling, the Joseph Campbell sense of storytelling.”
Favreau adds that he has learned a great deal from Cameron in regards to motion capture and CGI and will be using similar techniques in Iron Man 2 because the way he made Avatar is such a technical revolution. “It is a game-changer from a production standpoint certainly in the way he’s using motion capture and operating a camera within a volume… the line between animation and live action is blurring in many ways.” He adds that even the typical process of filmmaking is changing due to Avatar. “The way that Jim’s doing it, it’s a much more organic process where post-production, production, and pre-production all sort of roll into one another and you’re moving back and forth between those media.”
I’ve been saying Avatar will be the next big cinematic revolution for years now, just because I believe James Cameron has achieved something truly spectacular. I don’t think any of us can really grasp what it will be like at this very moment. We’ll need to see it to believe it, because we can’t even comprehend what it’s all about until we get our first glimpse, which is why we haven’t seen any photos yet. Hearing Favreau say these kind of things only further solidifies my hope that it will be the next revolution. I just get excited thinking about how amazing Avatar could be and how big of a leap forward it will be for cinema.
Quint’s fantastic interview with Favreau also touches briefly on IMAX and why Favreau doesn’t think it’ll really work for Iron Man 2. He primarily believes that CGI at such a high resolution isn’t entirely believable yet and it’s a pain to lug around enormous cameras on set. I’m not entirely sure I can take his side, only because The Dark Knight looked so amazing, but it sounds like Iron Man 2 probably won’t have any scenes shot in IMAX. Either way, I’m very excited to see Favreau take on Iron Man 2 because it seems like he’s really going to push his own filmmaking boundaries even further than the first one. As for Avatar, I know I’m anxiously awaiting our first glimpse at the beautiful world the Cameron has created.
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Major “Avatar” Set Piece Details – See Through the Eyes of an Alien!
Thursday, March 05, 2009
**UPDATE: March 7 - Jim here, got a MASSIVE update to Michael’s story from a MarketSaw reader by the name of Cremany from Germany. He is claiming to have seen a 3 minute clip sequence of Na’vi running through Pandora! He also says there are 2 more clips involved – check out his quotes from the comments section of this post:
ok… i asked a friend who was at CeBit with me and he saw the whole sequence of avatar (3 minutes)! It was 100% avatar, but it wasn’t a promotion for the movie, it was a promotion for a company which works on the photorealistic enviroment in the movie. The company uses 3 clips from avatar to present the technology.
the clip is in a first-person viewpoint and shows a person running on a a root very fast, suddenly the root ends and the person jumps to another root and start running again. you can see big trees in the size of a skyscraper, it is a very dusty and dark.
a friend told me the second clip shows a convoy drivinig through a canyon and suddenly a few big rocks roll into the canyon and the third clip looks like the inside of a huge mushroom with a crystal in the middle.
the clips are really photorealistic but you can see it’s computer animated… impressiv but not mind-melting. it’s very hard for me to explain because i didn’t give the clip a lot of attention…i didn’t realize that this was from avatar.
it was only first-person, but in the second clip my friend saw a few na’vis.but when i saw the clip i didn’t know it could be avatar before i read the topic here on this site. i wasn’t sure, so i ask my friend and he knew more aboud it and he saw all 3 clips, too. he has also a few connections to the event-management, they confirmed the avatar clips as promotion for a company which works together with panasonic.
This could be the clip we have been waiting for guys! I know there were clips shown in Nuremberg, Germany at the Toy Fair so this makes a lot of sense. CeBit is in Hannover. Keep it here for more updates!
Hi everyone, Michael here. A few months ago, G@BRIEL GR@Y dropped into a discussion here on MarketSaw, where he described what he considered to be the standout visual effects set piece of Avatar: a 12 minute sequence seen through the eyes of Jake in Avatar form as, among other things, he runs through the Pandoran jungle. Now, I have heard from a completely different source, who I can confirm as legit, that there is indeed a first person set piece in the film.
First, here is what G@BRIEL GR@Y had to say a few months ago:
There is a twelve min segment entirely in the first person viewpoint. this as im sure you all could understand is a tricky thing, you`ve seen examples in doom. which look cool….but never felt real. for instance blinking blurring of vision. photoreal is now easy. animateing it to define real is very hard. this most definatly is the money shot of the biggest movie ever conceived.
G@BRIEL GR@Y also posted the following on ComingSoon.net (as reported by MarketSaw reader Darkoo):
I was told about a 12 min segment of avatar where its in the first person viewpoint.and they were having probs making the scene feel real because people blink and have blurred vision. and from what im told they have found a very interesting compromise.
Here is what my source, who spoke to someone who had seen parts of the sequence, had to say to me a couple days ago:
1) He said that ‘when you are running through the jungle of Pandora and their tails are moving in front of your face, your brain will melt.’
2) I asked whether it a return to Tech-Noir form from JC and he said ‘its like Aliens, but from the POV of the Aliens’ :)
3) Big Rock Candy Mountain is supposed to be ‘amazing.’
4) Slightly off topic, the BAA preprod at Lightstorm was ‘very much in line with Kishiro’s artwork.’ Imagine that in 3D? /brain melts
So G@BRIEL GR@Y’s report is almost certainly legit, which is very exciting. The concept of Avatar is very much about letting go of the confines of your body, and experiencing the world through a different set of eyes. I think this sequence will be an incredible way of driving this point home. And, yes, it will certainly be brain-meltingly cool. It will be fascinating to watch Battle Angel continue to develop, too. Mark Goerner’s interview shed some fascinating light on the huge amount of work that has gone into that project so far. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
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http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/james-cameron-not-messing-around-with-his-avatar-trailer.php
James Cameron Not Messing Around With His ‘Avatar’ Trailer
Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on March 10, 2009
James Cameron takes his craft very seriously. And rightfully so, as Cameron’s upcoming film Avatar has built up some impressive buzz and even mightier expectations. Fans expect that the man who pioneered cool CGI effects with Terminator 2 and took scale to the umpteenth level with Titanic
will deliver something truly remarkable with his next film, said to be another potentially mind-boggling sensory experience. And to live up to such lofty expectations, one must choose carefully when cutting together a trailer — as it can severely modify the expectations, hopes and dreams of his faithful fans.
This is why we are now seeing a report from Market Saw that is claiming that eight trailers have failed to meet Cameron’s standards of excellence. There have been strong rumors from various sources saying that a trailer will play for press and industry folks at ShoWest in Las Vegas at the end of this month, but nothing has been confirmed. There has been some footage shown at various toy conferences in Europe, including a three minute clip of Na’vi running through Pandora that was shown at CeBit in Hannover, Germany. You can read a much more in-depth report about that footage here.
Also notable in the Market Saw report is some new information about how grounded the film will be in real science. For those not familiar, the film follows the story of a Marine (Sam Worthington) who is brought to the distant planet of Pandora, inhabited by a humanoid race known as the Na’vi. As he attempts to settle the planet as an alternative home for humanity, he gets in too deep with the Na’vi and ultimately crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival. And as the report explains, the film will have a lot of hard-science based elements as Cameron and team build up this richly bio-diverse planet. “What Weta and Cameron have done is create a complete alien ecosystem grounded in hard science,” Explains Market Saw
’s source. “If Pandora were real, it would look and feel like what will be represented on screen.”
If true, this “eight trailers denied” rumor gives weight to the immense expectations that James Cameron has for this film, which would be his first directorial work since he made the highest grossing film of all-time, Titanic, in 1997. Also, I am digging the “real science” element of Pandora’s ecosystem. If anything, Cameron’s film will be a very cool experience.
Are you excited about Avatar?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/movies/25avatar.html
Fan Fever Is Rising for Debut of ‘Avatar’
LOS ANGELES — In an old airplane hangar near the beach here, James Cameron has been working feverishly to complete a movie that may:
(a) Change filmmaking forever
(b) Alter your brain
(c) Cure cancer
For certain expectant movie fans, the answer might as well be all of the above.
Eight months before its scheduled release on Dec. 18, Mr. Cameron’s “Avatar,” a science-fiction thriller filmed with his own specially devised 3-D technology, is stirring up a kind of anticipation that until now had been reserved for, say, the Rapture.
That might foretell a hit on the order of Mr. Cameron’s “Titanic,” with $1.8 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
Or it might just be a giant headache for 20th Century Fox, which is backing “Avatar” and will have to spend much of the year managing expectations for a film whose technological wizardry is presumed by more than a few to promise an experiential leap for audiences comparable to that of “The Jazz Singer,” the arrival of Technicolor or an Obama campaign rally.
To date, neither a trailer nor even a still photo from the film, which tells the story of a disabled soldier who uses technology to inhabit an alien body on a distant planet, has been made public by Mr. Cameron or Fox.
But a number of enthusiasts who have been swapping notes on the message boards at IMDB.com claim to have already seen the movie — in their dreams. “The special effects were mostly drawings and cartoons, but they looked 3-D still,” wrote one “planetshane,” whose particular dream involved a pirated copy of an early version.
“It was the best movie I had ever seen,” the post continued.
Only a few weeks ago, Joshua Quittner, a technology writer for Time magazine, fed the frenzy when he reported feeling a strange yearning to return to the movie’s mythical planet, Pandora, the morning after he was shown just 15 minutes of the film. Mr. Cameron, Mr. Quittner wrote, theorized that the movie’s 3-D action had set off actual “memory creation.”
Questioned by telephone recently at his home in Mill Valley, Calif., Mr. Quittner said he was still reeling from the experience.
“It was like doing some kind of drug,” he said, describing a scene in which the movie’s hero, played by Sam Worthington, ran around “with this kind of hot alien chick,” was attacked by jaguarlike creatures and was sprinkled with sprites that floated down, like snowflakes.
“You feel like the little feathery things are landing on your arm,” said Mr. Quittner, who remained eager for another dose.
Executives and producers of the film declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement Fox said: “Jim Cameron is breaking new ground with this film. Like all movie fans, the studio is excited by the prospect of such an original piece of entertainment.”
In a brief interview reported by The Associated Press in December, Mr. Cameron said he was worried that “Avatar” could not live up to the expectations that were building around it. “Whatever they think it’s going to be, it’s probably not,” he said at the time about those who were speculating about the movie on the Internet and elsewhere.
Yet Mr. Cameron has done his share to feed the hype with his repeated assurances that a coming wave of 3-D cinema (yes, it still requires glasses) would have the power to penetrate the brain in a way that movies never have.
Some fans believe that Mr. Cameron and his colleagues have finally crossed the “uncanny valley.” That is a supposed point at which a viewer’s responsiveness to a simulated human takes a sudden drop into revulsion as the image comes close to reality but strikes the watcher as being zombielike, or not quite right.
Dr. Mario Mendez, a behavioral neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, said it is entirely possible that Mr. Cameron’s work could tap brain systems that are undisturbed by conventional 2-D movies. One, he said, is a kind of inner global-positioning system that orients a person to the surrounding world.
“Three-D demonstrably creates a space that triggers this GPS; it’s really very stimulating,” Dr. Mendez said. He added that he had used virtual-reality therapy in working with soldiers at the Veterans Administration hospital in Los Angeles — and found himself jarred by his experience with a “virtual Iraq” simulation.
“It was with me for days and days,” Dr. Mendez said.
At ShoWest, a convention of movie exhibitors, a few weeks ago, Mr. Cameron in a short promotional video compared watching “Avatar” to “dreaming with your eyes wide open.” (It was a neat complement to those who have been viewing the movie in their sleep.)
But, sooner rather than later, an increasingly restless group of the fans would like to sample the real thing. And that presents a conundrum for Fox, which will be hard pressed to release a conventional, 2-D trailer online — one of the most powerful ways to promote a movie these days — without undercutting the promise of a transcendental 3-D experience.
“I can’t believe they would spend 12 years developing the technology and telling us in words how great this is, then show us in 2-D,” said T. F. Powell, who runs AvatarMovieZone.com, an unofficial fan site devoted to the film. Mr. Powell recently spoke by telephone from Kansas.
Some fans are already teasing their peers about expecting too much.
“You would think this movie cures cancer,” taunted a skeptical Danny Danger in his “movie preview extravaganza” on a MySpace blog in January.
Typically, studios have given a peek at some of their biggest science-fiction and fantasy movies during the giant Comic-Con convention, an annual summer gathering of the fans in San Diego. But that also poses problems for “Avatar,” in that Comic-Con’s convention hall setting has not been equipped to showcase films in 3-D.
“I can’t imagine we will not have something, but nothing has been confirmed,” said David Glanzer, the convention’s director of marketing and public relations, speaking of the prospects for an “Avatar” moment at Comic-Con.
As for the movie’s release in December, Mr. Glanzer said, “Maybe they should have nurses in the lobby.”
It was a joking reference to a ploy once used by the producer William Castle. He posted fake nurses in the lobby of theaters that showed his own neuron-challenging horror film “Macabre,” while insuring every member of the audience for $1,000 against “death by fright.”
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http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/04/29/steven-soderbergh-praises-james-camerons-avatar
Steven Soderbergh Praises James Cameron’s Avatar
Posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 by Peter Sciretta
It seems like every other week now a new filmmaker or studio executive makes a comment about how James Cameron’s Avatar is going to revolutionize cinema. Jon Favreau
has called Avatar “a game-changer” and having seen some footage, he thinks “it’s the future.” Recently Sony head Amy Pascal told Forbes that she thinks Avatar is “going to change the way you consume entertainment. I don’t know that it will ever be the way you see dramas, but I can’t say anymore that it won’t be.” And Steven Spielberg has even predicted that Avatar will be the biggest 3-D live-action film ever.
Academy Award winning director Steven Soderbergh is the latest filmmaker to praise Cameron’s upcoming sci-fi epic: “I’ve seen some stuff and holy sh*t,” Soderbergh told ComingSoon . “It’s the craziest sh*t ever. That could negate everything I just said.”
Cameron’s new film is being treated like the second coming. I’m not sure how the film could possibly live up to all the ginormously hype. But just like all of you, I’m riding on the high buzz and hoping it will be great.
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Cameron’s Avatar a 3D drug trip?
By John Howell 30 April 2009
http://sffmedia.com/films/science-fiction-films/352-camerons-avatar-a-3d-drug-trip.html
They have yet to release a trailer or even a publicity photo from actual footage, but James Cameron and his team have managed to generate some impressive hype for his upcoming 3D science fiction epic, Avatar. His first movie since Titanic has a budget pushing US $200 million and enough hype to power a mission to Mars. Now it appears the 3D technology he created to turn his vision into a reality, the key to the movie’s success or failure, may be habit forming. A technology writer for Time Magazine, after being shown 15 minutes of the movie, posited the movie’s 3D action had set off actual “memory creation.”
“I couldn’t tell what was real and what was animated–even knowing that the 9-ft.-tall blue, dappled dude couldn’t possibly be real. The scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora were real,” he said.
The New York Times interviewed him later.
“It was like doing some kind of drug,” he said, describing a scene showing Sam Worthington running around “with this kind of hot alien chick,” and being attacked by jaguarlike creatures. He was sprinkled with sprites that floated down, like snowflakes. “You feel like the little feathery things are landing on your arm”.
In the same New York Times article, Dr. Mario Mendez, a behavioural neurologist at the University of California, said it is entirely possible Cameron’s 3D technology could tap brain systems that are undisturbed by conventional 2D movies. An inner global-positioning system that orients a person to the surrounding world, was one example he gave.
“Three-D demonstrably creates a space that triggers this GPS; it’s really very stimulating”.
He went on to say that he had used virtual-reality therapy in working with soldiers at the Veterans Administration hospital in Los Angeles, finding himself jarred by his experience with a “virtual Iraq” simulation.
Cameron himself told Time Magazine that 3D viewing “is so close to a real experience that it actually triggers memory creation in a way that 2D viewing doesn’t.” Cameron also believes that stereoscopic (3D) viewing uses more neurons, which would further heighten the impact of 3D.
So will we all become addicted to 3D films? I’m not sure reality will ever match the hype, but I’m certainly keen to see how close it comes. The last 3D movie I saw, Robert Zemeckis’s excellent animated feature Beowulf, certainly captured my imagination. I remember certain scenes with an unusual clarity (and not just those involving Angelina Jolie).
The only reason I haven’t watched more 3D movies since is that apart from animated cartoons, like Monsters VS Aliens, big screen productions with serious actors and scripts seem hard to find. Perhaps now that Hollywood appears to have caught the 3D bug on a massive scale, with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson willing converts, we’ll be flooded by addictive 3D productions that will transform our viewing experience forever. Or maybe Avatar will come and go and the 3D hype with it? I hope for the former but expect the latter. Only time will tell.
James Cameron’s Avatar was supposed to be released in May, but the international released date has been pushed back until 19 December.
Madventures is a Finnish travel show that premiered on the channel Subtv, nowadays Sub, on October 13, 2002. The show concentrates on so called backpacking instead of tourist attractions. It is presented by Riku Rantala (born July 20, 1974, Helsinki, Finland), and Tuomas “Tunna” Milonoff (born February 26, 1974, Helsinki, Finland), the show’s director and cameraman, travel around the world exploring different cultures. The two emphasize that they are on a journey, not on a holiday.
The travel documentary is made on a relatively low budget with no major production crew but rather just the two presenters traveling together with the shooting equipment.
The first two seasons were made in Finnish, but for season three the show was sold to Travel Channel and Fiver and the language was switched to English. The third season began airing in Finland in early April 2009 with each episode being 10 minutes longer than the international version.
season 3 “ayahuasca healing session”
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season 2 “best bits” w/english subtitles
