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Alternate Perceptions Magazine, May 2021


Riding The Chariot; Becoming The Chariot.

by: Edward Carlos







(Additional Speculation on the Physical Sciences, Mystical Consciousness, and Close Encounters: Part Two, continuing the introductory essay titled, “Threshold.” (Throughout these essays, term definitions are paraphrased from on-line Wikedia Encyclopedia). (February, 2010).

* * *

After
A bell swings; in darkness.

Dark, like the bottom of the well of childhood, up the steep walls of which I’d spend hours shouting words like anthracite, ginko—over and over, each word falling back to me, until it stayed, and was mine: yes, that dark. And yet— though it’s dark, in the darkness through which the bell swings I can tell it’s dark again, the usual fireless fire the leaves make as they give themselves over, first from their branches, then a second time when—crushable, as the diminished tend almost as willingly, it seems, as instantly to become—they give way beneath and around those of us who have places to go, still, and believe in getting there.

A bell swings; then darkness. –Is dying like this? The bells in my head swing their own heads, their difficult black clappers for tongues swing against them in turn, like memory, which is a wave hitting shore. (p. 27. Riding Westward. Carl Phillips). First they showed me the planet Earth as it was eons ago, before there was any life on it. I saw an ocean, barren land, and a bright blue sky. Then black specks dropped from the sky by the hundreds and landed in front of me on the barren landscape. I could see the ‘specks’ were actually large, shiny, black creatures with stubby pterodactyl-like wings and huge whale-like bodies…they explained to me in a kind of thought language that they were fleeing from something out in space. They had come to planet earth to escape their enemy. The creatures then showed me how they created life on the planet in order to hide within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence. I learned that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside all forms of life, including man. …There was indeed DNA inside the human brain, as well as in the outside world of plants, given that the molecule of life containing genetic information is the same for all species. DNA could thus be considered a source of information that is both external and internal—in other words, precisely what I had been trying to image the previous day in the forest. (p. 55. “Defocalizing.” Quoting anthropologist Michael Harner in The Cosmic Serpent. DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. Jeremy Narby).

* * *

CONSCIOUSNESS, from within encounters: a prospectus of process:

This is speculation. If you experience close encounters of the third kind, you ask of yourself what is the means of assessment about what distinguishes the various levels of awareness about what is happening in each instance and between them. You ask how does the mind assess what is happening. You attempt to describe the changes of your own consciousness during a close encounter of the third kind while “that” other, larger, consciousness is enacting itself within the awareness of the person involved with such. You wonder if you can clarify what is complicated, compounded, and multiplicitous in nature. I speculate that my thoughts on this subject might be more pertinent to other encontrants; however, I invite feedback, regardless. Hence, I offer the following:

*

A cosmic consciousness foments within a close encounter of the third kind reflecting immensity, a surging insistence for creation beyond the human awareness that might be pertinent to the encounter. To this consciousness and its development, I find a more localized connection for human and earth-world evolution from era to era, defining an era as 2,160 years, and in each phase of this evolution. In the new Aquarian era, we witness in this first 100 years a shift from a printing-communication system to an electronic development with the computer, with the initial two phases until around 1000 of these years being a reductive theoretical initiation as a structural repetition of past initiatory phases (often called geometric, as in art history during the past two eras), and all in keeping with a spiraling development through the eons. Inherent to the close encounters, the cause, too, lies beyond any intent of those beings authorized for the activity wherein each detail is oriented to the fulfillment of the human-encontrant’s role.

Thus, a vast consciousness engenders regular human consciousness and any altered state of that awareness that may be pertinent to the encounter. The enormity of this consciousness also engenders mystical consciousness as to such insights as occurring. Mystical consciousness seems to be relevant to close encounters, but encounters open one to an expanse far beyond the wisdom and symbolic aspects of mystical insistence. Intentionality is engendered as well, and is broader and deeper than the insights and understanding of the major instances of mystical thought, and, significantly, of all aspects of all thought. This vast consciousness is the wellspring of being. An insistence for evocation and ultimately revelation is engendered as well; hence, a cosmic consciousness creates life, a life that persistently evolves and changes, and forms the sense of an ongoing, unceasing, creation.

Contrary to a general and rational acceptance, consciousness is not a possession of any individual; rather, consciousness infers that the individual is an aspect of that immense and expressive, seemingly, self-possession.

The multiplicitous array of this brooding, exacting, passionate, and creative force includes the limitless physicality of form -- the shaping of that deep significant consciousness that presumes all thought and creates all form.

Although human awareness, or consciousness, is significant to an evolving conscience, and regardless of the process engendering human understanding and development, all sensibility of any consciousness is an aspect of the larger consciousness that I refer to in this speculation as cosmic consciousness. Because of the inclusiveness of the term, I utilize “cosmic” as a somewhat arbitrary word, and corral the term at least momentarily, and cautiously, as I do other words in this writing, such as consciousness, conscience, spirituality, soul, being, symbol, metaphor and the like…all concepts with a philosophical overture to a broader thought spectrum.

Consciousness is not possessed by any individual, rather the individual as physical entity, as with all objective corporeal forms, is an expression of consciousness and the human leans into that realization as experience proposes and processes. My tenuous assumption from encounter lessons is that all physical form throughout the galaxies and universes, indeed, all life in that constantly moving flux, is an eruption of cosmic consciousness with an intensive rush to sensibility, and all is part of the breathing that produces the eons and eras within those “great years” which constantly begin in every instance.

The changes within human conscious awareness and human corporeality (i.e., the sensing mechanics in human awareness) are localized, concretely, to the planet, earth, with earth’s own history as a living organism and gravities. This abject locality of human consciousness is in comparative reference to and in contrast with cosmic consciousness. Changes that occur during an encounter (shifts of forms, for instance; the apparent movement through solid forms, for another, which quantum physics should verify at some point) imply that relationship is a milieu of being/becoming, and such shape-shifters, again, for instance, indicate formative patterns or related events that in turn allow for understanding of certain principles evolving. Dreams, too, as akin to the altered states involving encounters, may evoke such patterns in symbolic form. Dreams are the signifiers of the unconscious, the night to night harbingers of the impending future hours.

Encounter provocations suggest changes, also, in the individual’s status regarding sense perception of existents and entities as community; hence, in the encounter scenario a breadth is inferred beyond what is normal or regular to sense perception that will take the form of extra-sensory perception. Encounters heighten ESP in a participant, at least momentarily and such perception (a form, too, of intuition) precipitates an impending encounter if one is alert to the potential). Perception is a stasis of the corporeal form (unless corrupted by accidents or birth defects, and then, too, a stability exists or will ensue making one’s perception a valid grasp of the world). Perception is concentrated in the unique body of the individual before encounters happen but encounters may make an encontrant more aware of their own awareness. The greater significance, however, is not changes in perception per se (the term “perception” also involves the ideational nature of human thought), but in conceptual frameworks and the effect on human consciousness and conscience. The current persisting awareness is pertinent to the former life of the encontrant (or mystic if the reservoir implies that engendering, which is not, apparently, a common factor to all who have experienced these encounters). Otherwise perception is the constant mechanism of the body complex.

For the encounter’s human participant, the relationship of the human mind to the larger format of the expansive cosmos is a mental and emotional stretching (akin to relocating the original pure spirituality of the soul prior to these encounters and this lifetime). The changes occur via a series of lessons (expositions, often) over a lifetime derived from a series of encounters and their aftermaths, with momentary resolution of sorts, until a further expansion happens with the next encounter and its aftermath. If participating the encontrant bears the marks of successive visitations. I accept that the scenario is, at least at the subconscious level, a volunteering participation (i.e., one may unconsciously accept the perimeters for one’s own personal development and need) and not an abduction--a disingenuous stereotype and a result of commercial interests that have invented and insisted on retaining in the general public orientation.

Once more born within the eclipsing of the past, the current life of an encontrant is evoked utilizing what went before and presenting stage by stage, age by age, resonances of that history, i.e., an intensification of consciousness is forming within the consciousness of the encounter. Every act, every thought, and some dreams speak constantly of the residue of the encounter and what is taught and brought before the conscious mind during and after, the effect concentrated in an affective, resilient, and ever shifting connotation. The sense of responsibility felt by the encontrant is obsessive in that the affective connotations are constantly felt and continuing as to the concern.

Lessons are given by the beings on the vessels (for humans as connoted by the encounters); the quality of relationship to the world, to other humans and other species, is continually augmented in that one’s consciousness continually grasps something of the former encounters’ milieu which is wide, rich, and deep, as in a spiritual sense. As an aspect of consciousness the implication is that all is interrelated, in a sense wedded, wedded to the strange mystery of the levels of coherence.

De-centering is the mystical dehiscence resulting from encounters; the encontrant’s consciousness is ripened for a radiating expansion of contents or meanings, a contrast to regular human rationale and to general theological reasoning that suggest centering within in the sense of closure should be the desirable spiritual activity. The splitting open of valuation in an expansive manner is confounding and the encontrant may initially experience confusion in facing the new portents. Confusion is more an aspect of earlier and initial encounters than later occurrences, when one has a sense of what is happening based on earlier indications. Concentration and capable focusing is, paradoxically, a formative quality of being non-centered as to behavioral drama. Eventually the participant achieves some feeling of calmness in the face of encounter turbulence and the earlier fears of psychological mayhem.



Coherence, complicit as to form, offers meaning even if elusive; meaning is the radius in the penetration into and through to the center of experience and those thrusts that move beyond the center. Coherence and the meaning thereby is ever widening in the milieu of consciousness, complementary with all levels of awareness and how expiated: such as with altered states of consciousness, mystical or visionary consciousness, shamanic journeys, regular day-to-day awareness, aesthetic concentration leading to creative and artistic, scientific, and athletic expressions, dream-states, etc.).

Where concentration is fabricated as to a circumference, wholeness in the sense of a form initially seems apparent. The experience is dimensional for the participant-encontrant; multiple images in a transparent mode settle over the slightest indication of organization to which one is mentally wedded. The overlay incorporates depth, and is sometimes protective for the encontrant if the images perceived seem too frightening or eccentric.

Part of the individual’s history is dramatized with the beings performing those roles and “wearing” the figural manifestations of people in that past –the images appear to be holographic in nature (a three-dimensional superimposition of countenance over the basic configuration). I am reminded of the legend of Adam and Eve who don human raiment and assume the countenance of human flesh as they leave the Garden of Eden. However, imaginative and perhaps mythically relevant instances, too, are also introduced in the encounter, not only memory-indications especially if one’s speculative concerns about these past experiences is visually shaped during the encounter activity. Although such polar instances between what was and what might be are sometimes confusing, the multiplicitous nature of consciousness is suddenly discovered and the dramatizations, juxtaposed and/or overlapping, offer credence to the coherence that is to be understood. That the language of encounters is imagic, visual, and metaphorically experiential in nature is a facet of the wide-reaching proportions of one’s sensibility, a sense one trusts from the sustaining auguries of living.

The imagery (whether narrative in format or singular in form) acts as a glowing center in the developing suppositions, a variant of light that is energy, and that is electrical and magnetic in that particularizing of mass (form) which in turn produces a wellspring of atomic flickerings of light, self-generating of the nature of time and space. Nothing is repetitive in encounters, however, nor in a mystical persuasion in consciousness. Each next encounter augments what is garnered in the past encounters, thus repetitive footnotes, to use literary-lingo, do not sustain a development but remain in the mode of stereotyping which concludes and halts the potential of an evolving consciousness. Historical and/or theological and philosophical treatises sometimes defer to such repetition in form and format, undermining or at least tempering their value.

Such encounter-styled awareness, harbored in the imagery, notes the mysterious, magical, evocative, and inspirational tomes that these presentations appear to be, yet such heightening includes the emotion of fear (part of the awe), that like anger, a self-fulfilling rhetoric within one that will need to be analyzed and addressed. A sensing of devaluation is sometimes a shadow form to the encontrant who is aware of the human potential for violence, an asunder of coherence and communion. The potential of insanity registers, but some significance lies in dissecting the word, i.e., in-sanity, to add to the connotations. Encounters are not, obviously, normal activity, but are, congruently, somewhat isolated incidents happening in human existence…but not as much as regular consciousness might purport, however



Explication by way of one visual-metaphoric example:

At the initial level of the encounter, the imprint of a mother-vessel surrounded by smaller crafts is presented. In particular, a sighting in Florida, near the border of Georgia, a thunder and lightning storm covered all visible portions of the sky. As with the image to be explicated, various vessels in the night sky flew in and out of large cumulus clouds. Lightning was continuous from within the clouds illuminating them in a beautiful stream of colors, and striking into and throughout the sky surrounding the clouds.

One is drawn into the harbor of this pathway. The coherence of lights as system of spiritual imagery offers a myriad eruption of, an image with, life in all vitality, in the vision that may be expressed. Various resonances in terms of meaning radiate from the imagery and from the thoughts surrounding thereby creating an environment for the mind’s nurturing of what has been grasped. This is not merely a momentary ideation of the imagery, but an ongoing intuitive manifesting over time.

I offer an example of how a metaphor might be presented and the range of possible connections to other implications for the encontrant to eventually note: A vision includes a yellow monarch butterfly flying around the head of the encontrant who is walking on an open path in a forest. In the immediate aura are many tiny yellow lights akin to fireflies glowing in the night. Yet equally impressed in the mind is the thought that these might be infant butterflies “yellowing” into lights and surrounding their mother. (My use of this term, “yellowing,” is in accord with my being an artist, and how hues enact and interact, verb-like). The encontrant understands this is not biologically feasible to the insect yet the imagery is beautiful as an imaginative percept to ponder and seems to be presented, at least, for wonder. The encontrant recognizes that all these glowing lights are born of the mystical expansion rather than being a manner of how the biological birth occurs.

Yet, of significance and as seductive a premise as the light, the yellow glimmers of hope and rebirth, is what enables the illumination-- the dark path, the vast inky night, the darkness of the soul’s shadow which fills space and proffers time as coordinate. In the vision when the encontrant is awakening from the darkness of sleep are the wafting hurtling beings as if frenzied to purvey something away from chaos, and maneuvering through the space surrounding- the rooms, the hallways, the bed itself of consciousness are the small dark forms moving so swiftly they seem as shadows. Between the light and the dark is what is inbetween, and encontrants recognize the difference between--that inbetween--perceivers and perceived. In this space, being is born illuminated by sun and moon, and of the huge expansion, the nothingness, that permeates existence until we step forward to make soul, that is matter, the reality sought by being. This is the tunnel of Philips’ well, the serpent form that spins through eternity carrying each of our individual DNA as interior form and meaning--soul, circling always in the spiraling of era after era, the sure, slow, way of evolution.

The image is metaphorical and perhaps ideationally symbolic, pertinent to many possibilities, and metaphor as experience is long understood by the encontrant. Or, consider another image appearing through intuition: that of an ocean mother, a mermaid, giving birth to an entire school of fish, and comparatively consider, too, that the fish are metallic and reflective vimanas (the ancient Hindu equivalent of crafts that carry gods and goddesses, and currently, summarily, and stereotypically, what our science-fictional imagination calls UFOs). In each such interface the image seems to represent creation, as in birthing, and that the mind creativity spawns the thought that each cell, at all quantum levels, represents creation ensuing and evolving. This image of butterflies as living auras of light in the margins of a wooded path is a dream image of speculation and equally of explication but must be explored in the aftermath because meanings haunt the imagery. The image establishes a patterning with regard to other such images. For yet another example, the image manifesting is akin to flickering lights surrounding a transparent human body countenance, which is another image from another encounter – that of an ancestral spirit met in the afterlife and in the “inbetween.” The inbetween is a resonance of sidhe, a Celtic term for where the mystical happens in our daily life, that mist that is often appearing in morning fields and above lakes, and on mountain summits. This exemplifies, too, how historical situations are part of the ongoing human philosophical speculation and mythic potencies.

Further surrounded by other such manifesting light-colors interconnecting, each ancestral spirit is a unique pattern of various hues that indicate a particularized essence of personality emerging to the human perception, still manifesting in the consciousness after death. The narrative image of movement in this particular encounter appears as a plurality of ancestral spirits, each of which is configured from memory assisting the reincarnated sense inherent in human incarnation

Thus, flickering lights set up a pattern of cohesion from other memories, stimulating a depth and spiritual resonance, an inner coagulate that enables defining the body of an ancestral spirit as to the past relationship. Any thought of pattern is basically only a provisional organizing of imagery, temporal to what is necessary regarding the immediate connections appropriate for an understanding.

In such an event, the transparent image of the ancestral body-form, as in the appearance of an ancestral spirit, is a residue of the memory of the individual’s earth presence. The flickering lights are an aura surrounding the transparent residue of countenance. Imagic details are presented in the encounter lesson as miniature yellow lights each radiating, all swirling and flickering as if of a tremulous wind circling around the central larger butterfly spawning the surrounding aura of multiple yellows, all glowing, all highly concentrated while each is as if part of a star cluster, a cluster of moving galactic reflections…. all, thus, is a metaphor enacting both presence and meaning, at once a memory as well as an emerging teleology. The narrative presented herein in each instance is a metaphor. The metaphor is presented as imagery to the mind’s eye, i.e., the mind’s creativity is always inspired, and always generating the vital impulse.

The impulse is not just to be in a microcosmic human sense, but to be creative (akin to the creativity of the vast consciousness that is the greater rushing and expanding macrocosmic universe); a resonance is provoked by the essence of being manifesting as image. With creative insistence and ongoing inspiration (a special cognizance in awareness), a depth is inevitable; passion is inevitable.

The encounter experience frequently offers direct memory-imagery if the encounter is distinct and persuasive to the conscious aspect of the encontrant. The images may overlap and persuade the encontrant of the pattern being conveyed in this instructional positing, borrowed from the depths of the encontrant’s own memory, but instigated by the beings operative within the encounter.

Experiencing the encounter and learning about whom one might be in terms of a motivational intentionality, then, is a spontaneous simultaneity of multiple provocations and of indefinite proportions. These myriad provocations occur all at once in the moment, although they form a kind of narrative in the afterthought akin to a parable. The initiation of learning about the intent within which the encontrant participates and accepts as teleological endeavor happens in that the parts enact together the spiritual totality, cohering, and sensed mainly through the intellect with thoughts thrusting deeper through abstractions appropriated by and bound to the phenomenon at hand.

The encontrant recognizes, thus, the dimensional circumference of the event, and the inner radius of penetration, the overt geometry of the encounter and the eros (life) within. This recognition of levels and depths, of shapes and facets, is tenable through individual human memories and all living human behavior as consequence, but despite the extreme earth-bound, gravity-based locality of all human memories, the local internals or details are ultimately images of process even more than manifesting as images of form (i.e., forms represent momentary stages in the development of human awareness and insight). These encounter images whether becoming an active memory or a subconscious residue to be experienced later through intuition become, in the immediate resolution, symbols. Their force takes on the persuasion of the symbolic.

In the language of the encounter, what is taught is initiated and expressed through metaphor, a process both explicable as a physical experience and a symbol as borrowed from the memories carried into the human’s subconscious of personal mind and body. Consciousness is continually operative at more than one level, and relationship is key to the meaning forming through one’s history.

Memories form within the unconscious storage of the flesh. Memories assume images that are redefined as the means of evocation, of revelation, one atop and within the other, or a provocative other is discovered, new in this instance of imagery and becomes part of the crowd of images. Metaphorically these memories, image conveyances, vehicles of appearances, are grasped by the encontrant as familiar. Any utterances about the images’ meanings are unrefined as to all terms employed in the eventual behavior because the imagery is always establishing a means whereby these too largely unconscious stimuli are often brought forth as awareness of objects, and of process. The stimuli come forth in regular human consciousness, the basic way station of awareness, as nouns and verbs et al in a language bound together within dreams.

The dreams or visions incorporate dialogue (less so in the encounters per se than in the aftermath of human activity {witness this writing for instance}) and as imagery (i.e., the metaphors), i.e., as the language of mystical or visionary consciousness – that consciousness spawned by the close encounters. Dreams promulgated by and stemming forth from the encounter and aftermath are prophetic, teleological in nature while using and recouping the past. The dreams pertinent to encounters are frequently magnificently complex and beautiful and suggest a sense of the ecstatic. Various dream-images reflect images in metamorphosis, translatable into symbols for exposition if the encontrant needs that approach.

Intuition, the deep level of the altered states pouring out of and penetrating into the mind, taps into the individual’s coherence of events and meanings operative within the life that is, loosely held together by the memories. All is memory in the human effacement of time, yet moving onward into the future as believed while accepting the time demarcation based on the sun and moon and movements, yet again as a form of coherence.

Intuition grabs all as pertinent and this seduction is felt to be necessary and strings together the various minds…the mental congealment developed from various ages in the encontrant’s enlargement (i.e., aging from birth to and past death). Thus, then a belief is created, an acceptance of a reality as defined, or as if by nature of the milieu in the discussion of humans about encounters, holographic and transparent or solid, relevant to the use of the terms heaven and earth.

The cohesion or wholeness of this experience, then, creates a transitory belief (note: belief will change through time and experience, and through additional encounters). Belief is an acceptance of a reality postured in the discussion of human beings about encounters (or of anything, really) in the aftermath of the encounter, and the thought is that all form, all thought, is as if holographic (and either transparent or solid in formative nature), but this is like other such terms a concept that is merely a momentary convenience. The encontrant learns to acknowledge but not hold on to such conveniences being always in a mode of discovery and concurrent temporary fulfillment.

From the encounters, one after another, each exposure insinuates the encontrant further into the mystery (and into the remarkable beauty of consciousness). With each encounter, one is the initiate moving forward through the rites being enacted, once accepted, and through the lessons offered, in order to grasp the faith of what is--the augmentation of an ongoing creation through the eras swirling, each era with a distinct, unique, system of communication pertinent to the age and the vital evolution of spiritual-physical concomitancy. From the given provocations the encontrant comes to realize that s/he has not only ridden in the chariot but has become the chariot during the flights, and has entered the secret.

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Author’s apologia and explication by way of an end-note:

Unsatisfied with what I perceived to be extreme stereotyping of basic UFO-encounter premises in the mainstream of anecdotal expressions, I became reclusive from the public discussion for several years, wanting to explore my personal consciousness and memories. A rather extensive research of mystical and/or visionary consciousness ensued, based initially on a book by Moshe Idel, The Mysticism of Abraham Abulafia, purchased enroute to a hypnotic regression session with psychologist, Dr. Fred Wright of Chattanooga, TN. Together Dr. Wright and I had been exploring encounters experienced while visiting the island of Iona, Inner Hebrides, Scotland, beginning with a 1990 Easter Sunday occurrence. As I walked into the bookstore that day, the book literally glowed as if urging my acceptance. That night, I discovered while reading Abulafia’s accounts that the descriptions reiterated almost exactly what that very afternoon I had, too, described while hypnotized.

My quest is always comparative and analogical in nature in that I check “everything” against the residue of the close encounters and the motifs discerned in these surreal experiences. I continually hope for a richer understanding as to a sense of responsibility being engendered.

My theological and/or literary “heritage,” I feel, is comparative to the ancient sefirothic grid for “divine” consciousness and to what I perceive as the metaphoric sensibility of the writings in the Judaic theological manuscript, The Zohar. Although I am not a member of any religion, my personal spiritual orientation as to history of the Judaic religion is related to the philosophically and mystically oriented Merkavah (i.e., chariot) and the related visionary excursions of the Talmudic traditions (referred to as aggadah, a form of mystical and visionary practices involving “travel” or “flight” to the Heikhalot (i.e., upper world spaces). My encounters confer, comparatively, with these flights into a deeper consciousness than my regular awareness, hence the title of the essay herein, “Riding The Chariot; Becoming The Chariot.” A variance, however, is that my experiences are definitely visual and visionary rather than the otherwise speculative non-visual sense of some of the mainstream Merkavah intellectuality. Regardless, from the long sequence of encounters during my lifetime, from early childhood, and continuing into the present, the encounters with their mystical and visionary orientation, ultimately connote that the images and insights provoked are not simply about something but are experiential and part of natural occurrences, and form the basis of who one is.

* * *

The essays are listed below that follow the theories herein and explore physical properties of the concern (the body moving through a wall or ceiling). Note the above essay is second in the series.

1). “Threshold”
2). “Riding The Chariot; Becoming the Chariot”
3). “Strata--The Wall”
4). “Veils”
5). “Will”

Edward Carlos (MFA, Ph.D.)

IONA: Art Sanctuary.
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


Friday, March 29, 2024