Direct Experience

Terrible questions looming just beneath a thin layer of bone and flesh. Tiny capillaries doing their best, a silent symphony of flowing red life pulsing beneath the surface. Terrible questions looming.
If I am not what I think I am, then what am I?
Antero Alli mentions that the awakened human brain is the alien and that those whose brains have awakened are the aliens among us and can be recognized by the light in their eyes.
He says Timothy Leary said this, and his host becomes stricken, turns ashy and stammers: "I've never heard that."
Ali laughs, "This was in a private conversation."
Ha ha. The man who has read all the books quivers when he meets a man with a direct experience of a third man whom the first man with all the books has only read about, but feels he knows.
Can't follow that? Am I being confusing or are you being dull?
Trick question. The answer is both.
Terrible questions looming, questions worse than these. An uncomfortable feeling that can almost be drowned by television and social networks and booze and parties and romance and cinema and literature.
Will it make a good comic book? Will it be a three part television miniseries?  Can we sell it? Does the second man have any idea what the first man is talking about when he says direct experience?
Ashy complexion. Uncomfortable voice.
Now things have gone too far if we are talking about aliens and the light in their eyes. LSD, ok, secret oral traditions, ok, aliens with light in their eyes, no! No! No! He's gone too far. How dare he?
We are only interested in reality here, which we have a clear understanding of thanks to the books written by others claiming something called direct experience.
Fuck it man, are you really still reading this?
What I am trying to tell you is that you should eat something from outer space that just might help you access a little inner space.
I tell her that mushroom spores could have been carried to this planet on comets.
"Are mushrooms really from outer space?"
Everything on this planet is from outer space baby.
"Yeah some scientists think that water was first introduced to this planet by comets. Bacteria too."
That's right baby, we are all stardust.
"The alien doesn't necessarily come from outer space, contact is made in inner space, and why not? We ARE the alien."
No! No! No! We've gone too far.
Terrible questions looming. Shaking the foundation of what we know. But brother there is a serious difference between gnosis and what you think you know now that you've read all those damned books and posted those comments about the video online.
God, if you're still reading this it must be because you don't know where to find the mushrooms.
Listen, listen, you should try printing this out and eating it. Right now.
At this moment you're just reading some shit somebody else wanted to say about what some other people said.
You should eat this. Go ahead. Take a bite. Chew. Swallow.
That's a direct experience.

Two Angels

Don’t break the silence. One word, a single word could send us crashing down into the terrifying gritty details of organic existence. We hold our breath, two angels poised face to face, the substance of our intricate bodies swirling and crawling with electric light. We are two angels who share one mind, one center held between us in the tenuous absence of thought and motion, so still that we are almost not angels, we are almost nothing at all.

Don’t break the silence.  We have two faces and each face contains two more faces, which contain two more faces, which contain two more… Watching the kaleidoscope of apparent being shifting across the surface of ourselves, our eyes grow ever wider.
Yes, angels have eyes. And tails. And wings, and horns, and ears, and fingers, and toes, and rivers, and forests, and ponds, and stars. What would be called flesh is a multicolored light show, but it will all shatter and melt and cascade into tight places if we make a sound just now, any sound at all.
So we are silent.

Bursting with music, we bite our tongues, press our ears down against our heads, freeze our ponds and hold it in. For now.
Eventually we will let it out in torrents of song that will carry us away from this place, up for a while, then down, then perhaps up and away again. We’ll ride the sonorous currents hither and tither, rippling as we go, dissolving, emerging, shimmering, vanishing, gleaming...

But for now silence, cradled between us like a sleeping babe, a pearl set in a silver ring, a solitary star shining in indigo sky, a crystal goblet upon a golden table. Hush, hush, our eyes blink to each other, two and two, faces sliding away like night and day.
Hush, hush glistening lashes flutter, hush, don’t break the silence.
Don’t break the silence.

Touch A Rock

Let us suppose that for the duration of this textual exploration the words "THE CLEAR LIGHT" will be used interchangeably with the words "THE REAL" and "THE ETERNAL". What these words refer to is a thing that I, the author, cannot give to you in words. They are words that I will use to refer to something beyond words, beyond time and all linear constructs.
To begin this exploration I wish to provide you with a terrain.
You will need a rock. You have my leave to gather this necessary material before continuing with me on this journey.
Now that you have the rock, (and if you don't have it, then go away and don't come back until you do) please touch it.
Touch a rock.
Not casually, but with everything you've got, touch a rock.
Were you thinking of anything else as you touched it? Or were you fully present with it, wholly open to the communion with that thing that we are calling "rock"? Was it the word "rock" that you brushed against with your mind, or was there something that you encountered with your hand? Or something that you illuminated with your attention, pure and true?
Touch a rock.
What is "rock"? When your hand was on it, were you there? Were you there or were you wandering through a chain of associations that stem from the word “rock“? Were you lost in thought about everything but a boring old rock?
Touch a rock.
What is beyond the word "rock"?
Eternity is not a very long time. Eternity is a state beyond time, outside of time, separate from it.
The human biological machine exists in time. Being is eternal.
When the Machine is locked in a state of identification with its own conflicts and pleasures it is not possible for the experience of Eternity to take root in it. If the machine can manage a state of high indifference to its situation as a machine, to the endless flow of thoughts and feeling that are the whir and buzz of mechanical operations, an interaction with the real becomes possible. We will call this experience “awakening.”
The human biological machine is not a merely physical entity. It is composed of many subtle parts. The emotions and thoughts are also part of the human biological machine. The part of you that thinks of itself as a “me” is a part of the human biological machine and a manifestation of the unfolding of time.
If we can awaken the biological machine so that it may interface with eternity, we create the possibility for Creation, something that is occasionally called “THE GREAT WORK” or simply “THE WORK”. However, to even get to the point of being able to create the possibility for Creation, one must first endeavor to cultivate and maintain for extended periods that state of high indifference, the awakened state of the human biological machine. Often this is called “WORKING” too, but in actuality it is preparation for the REAL WORK that may be possible as a result of these efforts.
This is it, right now.
Touch a rock.
This is ETERNITY.
If you reach out and touch it.
Not casually, but with everything you've got, by making an effort to focus your attention on something that is not part of the struggles and desires of the human biological machine, something that cannot be defined by that linear construct that we call “language.”
While our attention is squandered on the unfolding of the human biological machine we perceive ourselves as moving through time. But this right now, this is ETERNITY, THE CLEAR LIGHT of objective REALITY.
Eternity cannot be something that happens later. It is something that happens right now or it doesn’t happen at all.
If it is THE REAL it can only be NOW.
This is the moment to endeavor to prepare for creative WORK.
Now you should begin to explore the terrain.
Touch a rock.
Thank you.

BOOM

All of that careful work, the seeds you gathered for the harvest, painstakingly filling your little gunny sack, careful to brush the dirt away and separate seed from stone and branch and refuse, all of that effort applied to accumulating and the accumulating itself leads to a precarious position. Each day you have made efforts to contain the energy of life, taking care not to raise your voice or titter and twirl like a squirrel on caffeine, abstaining from orgasm, and carefully taking measures to accumulate more, and more, and more. More fuel for the rocket ship, more fuel for your work, but it is so much more than you have ever had in your life, it is so much more than others going about their days and their lives have ever held in their sack. It is exciting, dizzying, tempting, difficult to bear. As the sack grows full, you wobble and weave under the weight, you are intoxicated by its volume. You may feel teeth chattering excitement, or you may feel as powerful as a Titan. If you indulge in sorrow then every seed will back you up with the power of plutonium. If anger comes a knocking and you try it on for size, then every drop of the energy you have accumulated may flow into the bulging veins of wrath. The seeds will apply themselves to whatever vice you apply yourself to, and the machine, the mechanism for harvesting will supply an endless array of dead end distractions on which you can blow your hard earned savings. The trouble, terrible trouble is that you must not only accumulate but apply the energy accumulated to a suitable task. All that fuel pooled together in a barrel is nothing special until you put it in the rocket, and the rocket is no good if it has no navigational system, no link to mission control. A moon launch would go horribly wrong if the computer running the mechanical functions of the ship suddenly feels it would be better to head for the sun or take a dip in the sea, because after all who the fuck needs mission control, I AM THE ROCKET. Naturally it leads to disaster. The operating system is not the rocket, it is part of the rocket just as mission control is not the rocket, but it is meant to be a part of the operation. A link between mission control and the operating system must be clearly established and maintained so that Mission Control can guide the rocket to uncharted territories. The energy accumulated for voyaging must be utilized properly for the voyage and not be allowed to pool up by that guy with the cigarette dangling from his lip glowering at the whole thing and muttering that space travel is not possible, and who gives a damn anyway, and someday I’ll be the one in charge, and BOOM!

Now

For one moment the world is startlingly clear. I can see it, beyond the veil of senseless brain chatter. The world is a bathtub, the kind that doubles as a shower, and I am staring up the tiled side and at a square air vent. I can see the fuschia towel hanging over the frosted plastic doors that roll on their aluminum track. I can see a bottle of ginger beer, green and perspiring on the ledge, but most of all I see the tile wall rising up on one side of me, I can see where it gives way to drywall and turns into the ceiling and pools around that square vent.
It is the most beautiful world. Strange and alive. I stare at it from the bottom of the tub where there is just enough water to warm the back of my neck, head, shoulders, buttocks and feet. My knees are bent because I am too long for the tub. The water level is too low to reach over my breasts and belly so they are exposed to the pleasantly cool air while my back side soaks in the salty wetness.
Then I close my eyes and drift back behind the veil to visit ghosts of princes past, I can see their eyes, angelic eyes, so sweet and troubling, (we know what angels do with earth women when they’re rambling down around the upper crust, the bible tells us so), and I wonder why they rode off into the sunset without me, when we could have seen the world as I have just glimpsed it together.
Whatever other ruminations blanket me are lost when I open my eyes to see again. Let me see again for a minute. My eyes go wide and look upon the ivory chamber encapsulating me and everything is silent. My mind holds its breath.
Then again I close my eyes and my mind exhales a torrent of thoughts. The first few bursts are poetry, words winding around the experience I have just had, like weeds choking out a garden, but lovely flowering weeds just the same, the sort I will use if I ever leave the bathtub and find a place to write them down, if I can remember them then...
Poetry gives way to crystallized theories, ideas about what it means to be alive, to perceive what I have just perceived. Courses of action are suggested and examined based on these new theories and then it comes down to a simmer, to a vaporized mass of memory and desire.
But for one instant I pulled all of the desire overflowing from my cup back into the vessels and let it boil. Too much. It overflows like water from a bubbling fountain and my focus is lost, a sailor adrift in the fog, waiting for the disabling conditions to pass. I do as much as I can with the situation as it is and wait for the mists to clear again, some time.
I sit up and drink the ginger beer. I slide back down into the water and it sloshes over my face, disturbed by my movements. Again I gaze upward, but this time I am thinking about what I saw before. I am thinking about the previous experience so that even if I am having a similar experience now, I don’t notice due to this trick of effleurage.
This is how I birthed my children; by rubbing my fingers on the bed sheets so that the sensation of doing so was carried to my brain, and due to the extreme sensitivity of the nerve endings in my finger tips, that message was received and processed by my overwrought nervous system before the notification that something tremendous was going on below the navel, thereby deadening the sensation of birth pains. In the same way, the mind froths with postulations based on the past and makes projections extending into the future to escape the intensity of NOW, the now that, like a star, is too brilliant to hold onto for too long. But if you can manage it, then for one moment the world is startlingly clear. And deathly quiet. And starkly radiant.

Binary Man

Here we go loop de loo, here we go loop de lie. Around and around like the waters spinning down a toilet bowl, spin, spin, spin. We will be back where we started again. One step forward, two steps back. Oh you pudgy balding little binary man. My hero, Binary Man, coming to slash through reality with his machete made of ones and zeros. Give him a yes or a no. That is your only choice. This was my hero? I have to confess that I also like Rorschach. I side with the deviant losers. *Sigh* . We are all going to get our hearts broken over and over in this sticky bubble gum web. Why did I make my baby wait every day after school? Just a little baby waiting for her mamma who’s off crying and fighting and sometimes running down the street alone to rescue her baby when the bus is late, and arriving disheveled and puffy eyed. And baby asks, “How did you get here so early?” But I’m a half hour late. I don’t know why baby, I thought I had friends, but then I had none. How did this all get rolling? I was standing in line behind a pleasant black man at the DMV. He was getting his motorcycle license. I was sixteen. This was the last day before my driver’s permit would expire, my last chance to take the driving exam and get my license. Sink or swim time. In line for hours. The gentleman explained to me, “People are either for you or against you. Sometimes it’s people you love, people who love you who are against you. But you have look past it all and see that they are either for you or against you.” The first incarnation of binary man. I thought he was right. My parents for example were against me, although they’d swear they were for me. But they were really for themselves and for their version of me which was not the actual me, but a me that served them. So I’d need to break clean. But I couldn’t do it properly for a long time. Soon I was alone. There is nobody here that is for me. I am not even for me. Damn you Binary Man! I think you were my father whispering in one ear all of the time, extreme and righteous, bending me, bending me, bending me until I was tweaked. The data that comes in is always tweaked as I process it. They are all against me. There is a distinction, however, between everyone being for themselves and everybody being against you. They are not all automatically against you, they just aren’t for you. There is a subtle difference. It is not a one or a two yet, not a yes or a no. There is a big gray forest that we may abide in, a shadowy place from which many shapes and possibilities may be plucked, raised, lifted, conjured. Yes and No man is coming with his machete. His goal is deforestation. He wants us to join him or die, twisted and alone in the desert he makes for us. Fuck you Binary Man. You are no hero! You are a mediocre Villain. I’m not going to join you. And I’m not going to be alone. I’m gonna fill my pockets with seeds of ambiguity and Johnny Appleseed it across the globe. You can loop de loo all you please, but you won’t get me. I’m gonna run up, up, up the holy mountain planting these little seeds. Like Luke Skywalker, I can still see the good in you father, but you are mostly machine now. It you come any closer I’ll lop off your machete hand with this gardening spade and watch you twitch. You are not a magick man, you are just THE MAN, taking names and asking, “Are you with me?” *chalks an x on your skull and slowly guides the machete to the mark for practice* “Or not?”

The Structure and the Noise

Long before that beast, THE WORD, came and turned its yoke and whip on us, there was a subtler, more insidious structure that bound us, the primal ancestor of that beast, THE WORD, which captured our ever present self like so many silly butterflies in the shimmering flower scented threads of its net. That which was before and other than THE STRUCTURE was free and wild like warmed up Jell-O and camp fires painting naked mud and blood crusted skin with an orange glow.
That other place; we still go there through little wormholes, through the noise we make which slices through THE STRUCTURE like a hot blade through canola based margarine. That matrix which holds us captive and enthralled is a structure of sound, music as the west thinks of music; melodic, harmonic. THE STRUCTURE is a piece of music. It holds us in place with its attention directing grasp.
We tell a story, because it tells stories with us. We are made in it, encased in it like the tiny pebbles of some drug locked within the gelatin capsule that we perceive as just "the pill", when in fact it is many tiny beads of something encapsulated in a thin layer of some odorless tasteless boiled down remnant of animal ligaments.
Someone invented it, that structure of sound. Not a someone like you think of a someone who wears a tie and who bought a desk at Ikea or even a someone like a caveman who picked up a bone and whittled a whistle. Someone who was there before the structure of sound. Something other than what you perceive yourself to be.
THE STRUCTURE is the meta-form of civilization. It is a crystalline matrix constructed by the choirs of singing elohim holding us here in suspended animation. It is the grand daddy of all the forms of organization with which you are intimately familiar. It is a holographic UNI VERSE. ONE VERSE of song in which you live and die forever.
But there is a way out, there has always been a way out, because there always was something other than the structure, a place that is not a place any more than the structure is really a place. A nothingness, the marrow of a bone, a nowhere that is somewhere as far as the something that crawls at the core of us is concerned.
A warm wiggly wordless noise.
Something that you can never talk about, never hold in the palm of your hand, never remember as it is as long as you are locked within the gelatin capsule. A secret. A secret because it cannot help but be kept, its expression is pure experience.
The knowledge of it is a happening. One is initiated into its halls, one lives there for a moment, for an eternity, then one awakens with the realization that this life, this existence is a sham, a con. It is a prison of sound, a labyrinth of sound, a confusing and captivating structure, MADE OF SOUND. We can not tell truthfully what is outside of it because the words themselves, the thoughts as we know thoughts to be, are a part of THE STRUCTURE itself.
What we can do is recall that we are now inside of something and that we once were outside and might be again at some point. What we can do is act in a way that is in accordance with our deepest intuition, the subtle remains of this ephemeral recollection. We may not know how or why it was constructed, how it came about, what it means to be held suspended within it. We may only know whether or not we wish to strive to be outside of it again. We may only know if we long to be of the noise once more.
We might be just electrons drawn through these crystal filaments perhaps in an effort to generate power for something we cannot imagine, and perhaps we work for the structure, and it works for something unknown, Perhaps we are pulled by our yearning to come out the other end of the crystal conductor we call a lifetime so that we may be whole again, one with the noise.
The misery we think of as our life is a small thing. A little trick, like the trick that lights a phosphorescent bulb. I, for one, only know that I love the noise in the deepest truest sense of the word. I would go back to it. I would serve it. I would slip out of the structure again and again, making little holes in it like a worm making holes in an apple, I am for the noise.
I am for the noise.
I am for the noise.
And I am against the structure, if only because I am for the noise and the noise negates the structure, eats through it like warm water through a castle build of rock candy. And so it is not malicious, it is only what noise does. It is only what I want to do, and what I have discovered I can do with this life as a pill, whittle away at the STRUCTURE and free fall in a cascade of tiny beads.

Intelligent Life

We would not know it if an intelligent life form or species of life forms was attempting to contact us even if they were. We lack the openness and unbiased power of observation that would allow us to perceive intelligence in an organism or system which was not very much akin to ourselves in physicality and ideology, but neither of these attributes signify intelligence in and of themselves.
Consider that as human beings we have been unable throughout the course of our brief history on earth to grant that other human beings who were physically different from us and whose language and culture varied from our own were equal in intelligence to ourselves. We have been unable to recognize intelligence in others of our own species. We have denied them freedoms, taken advantage of their perceived weaknesses, abused and tortured them, and only now, in the 21st century, are we beginning to consider it politically incorrect to assume supremacy based on race, and that is still up for private consideration in the minds of many. As long as the bigotry can be thinly veiled, it will still be granted entrance into mainstream politics and our day to day interactions. Supremacy based on creed yet runs rampant and no consideration whatsoever is given to the notion that our philosophies, our ideas and habitual mind sets are not inherently worthy, they are just ours.
We as a species may not even be adequately equipped to interact in a meaningful way with an intelligence functioning on a vastly different level than our own. For example, something could be transmitting a message to you right now, but, without the appropriate aperture to receive that message, it will go, metaphorically speaking, right over your head. Forget that what we consider a message and what we consider intelligence may not in fact be very intelligent or ripe with meaning in a more universal context.
We are not alone in our ability to self perpetuate and colonize, we are only unique in some of our methods, in the applications of certain tools. Are we really better than all the other life forms present upon this planet because of our linguistic skills and cognitive reasoning? Perhaps these are aberrations more than special qualifications.
Evolution functions via mutation, and that mutation which caused our Cro-Magnon ancestors to beat out (possibly even violently, contributing to the course of their extinction) the Neanderthals may be the cause of our isolation. We perceive ourselves as being alone in the universe because we are mutants, creations with an deviant consciousness that has been cut us off from the rest of the cosmos. Skills that have allowed us to flourish as hunters and conquerors, have usurped abilities that would make contact with intelligent systems possible. We may be the psychopaths of the natural world, deaf to the voices of those that we crush, unable to feel the harm we cause ourselves through the course of our conquest, because we are somehow neurologically damaged.
Our cunning, our breed of intelligence, may be our Achilles heel; the secret to our success and our debilitating weakness. We are surrounded by life, by organisms and systems which behave intelligently, which reach out to us with soft tendrils of warmth and light, speaking to our disabled senses, the senses that we have written off as nonexistent. The hardware may be there, but the software is damaged, infected by a virus that we have misnamed intelligence.
We have supposed that our own abnormal consciousness is the real deal, and that the rest of the universe is cold and dead, but it is the other way around. Our primary waking consciousness is cold and dead, and all of those things which we have considered beneath us from that vantage point, are in fact vibrant, and primal, they comprise the true kingdom which has been patiently awaiting our return.

Placing Attention on a Candle

To conduct the following experiment you will need a few basic tools. First you must secure for yourself both a quiet space where you will be undisturbed and a moderate measure of time. In addition you will require a small timer to keep track of the passage of time and to limit the duration of this experiment. You will also need as part of your arsenal a white pillar candle and a book of matches or a small butane lighter. In your secluded space, if possible, keep the atmosphere dim by turning off the electrically fed lights and drawing down shades or fastening curtains so that the sun will not invade.
Now, there are at least two basic ways of positioning yourself for this experiment. Both ways involve sitting. One possibility is to seat yourself on the ground, probably cross legged, with the candle placed approximately a foot and a half in front of you. Ideally you should be able to gaze down with your eyes at the candle whilst keeping your posture straight. In this case your face would more or less be parallel to whatever wall or fixture is in front of you, but your eyes will be turned down just slightly so that you can gaze at the candle with ease. The other option is to include in your list of tools a straight backed chair and seat yourself upon this with the candle positioned on the floor a foot and a half away from your own toe tips. If you choose this option be sure to sit up straight with your palms resting on your knees. Ideally your legs should be bent at the knees to form a nice 90 degree angle. If the chair is so short that your knees are inclined to reach up towards your jaw or so tall that the soles of your feet do not quite touch the floor, then skip the chair and sit on the ground.
Let us assume then, to keep these instructions simple, that you have opted to sit in an ideally proportioned chair with the candle on the ground before you. To begin you will need to light the candle and then set the timer so that it will alert you when six minutes of earth time have lapsed. After setting the timer, look twice to make sure that it has begun to calculate the lapsing seconds. By doing this you will eliminate the possibility of spending the entire experiment in distraction trying to remember if you did set the timer, or wondering if it was working properly after you set it. When you have checked it twice set it on the ground beside your chair just out of sight.
Now the experiment begins. Your objective will be to place your unwavering attention on the candle for the duration of the six minutes. When you notice that you are thinking about something and not simply observing the candle, you will dismiss the thoughts and return your attention to the candle. This of course is much easier said than done, which is why I will now describe for you a technique for applying your attention to the candle.
First become aware of your body, feel the sensation of being in your own skin. Experience yourself as physically present. Begin to expand this awareness so that you are perceiving the empty air just a few inches off of your skin. Continue to expand this awareness until it is as if you have cast a net of attention over your physical body and the empty space surrounding it, including the space occupied by the candle. Hold this expanded awareness of self by feeling your body, the empty space, and the candle as one unit. I say, "feel", and not, "imagine", because I do not wish to encourage any intellectual activity. Rather I urge you to experience yourself and your candle as a physical presence. Throughout the experiment your eyes should remain open and focussed gently on the candle. When you notice that you have lost track of your attention and become wound up with the never ending stream of intellectual thoughts ideas and associations that will inevitably try to upstage your physical presence, simply disengage them and become aware of your body, the candle and surrounding space by once again casting that subtle net of presence.
Attention is an active doing, not a state of passivity. It is a subtle form of exertion and requires an effort that most humans are not accustomed to making. It is subtle and more physical than intellectual. If you haven’t had much practice in using attention it will be difficult to do so in the beginning. It will be elusive. Like trying to find the muscles and give the neural command which will lead to wiggling your ears for the first time, it takes practice and effort, and you may or may not be successful within your first 2 or 20 tries. The only thing that you can do is to really sincerely try.
Do not be tempted to just sit there letting your mind run its course of distraction. Expecting that you will naturally be able to place your unwavering attention on the candle without making any unusual effort would be like expecting that by sitting and waiting long enough, daydreaming all the while, you will suddenly acquire the ability to wiggle your ears. Therefor remember that developing any new skill is challenging, and frustration may be the only sign that an effort is being made. Do not loose heart. Continue to work past the point of frustration. Ability lies just beyond that point.

Invocation

When I first heard the word "invocation", I thought of people in dark robes, standing around a circle, chanting and making strange gestures… scenes from an old horror movie or (in my case) a Mexican comic book. The basic real parameters were all there: the formation of a circle, the intensification of energy and effort through the presence and attention of many, the use of sound, image, voice and emotion, and the calling forth of a greater being from beyond the apparent collective reality. But the particular details were, and are, unnecessary.
A particular way of dressing, a particular vocalization, a particular technique or movement, a particular general tradition, a set of dogmas and beliefs… these are all elements in various invocations, but none of them define what an invocation is, none of them predetermine how to recognize when an invocation is happening or, much less, how to purposefully bring one to Life. As with all language, the word can be useful if utilized clearly, but it can also cloud our vision with prejudices, preconceived ideas and images, child-like fears and hopes, and extraneous connotations and implications that may seem incidental to the definition but can ultimately define or even completely curtail the possibility of an actual experience.
The map is not the territory but the map can definitely limit the territory that we are able to travel. If we restrict ourselves to following the map, then, for all intents and purposes, the map becomes the territory and the rest, the raw untouched chaotic oceanic reality, will remain unknown.
And so, my particular prejudices, ideas, connotations and images about the word "invocation" would limit my possibility of participating in and actually staging a real Invocation.
One strategy to deal with this situation is to banish the most charged words from our vocabulary ("god", "spiritual", "moral", "heaven", "meditation", "yoga", etc.) – all the words that have been used too much, have been burdened with so much extra baggage, so many other implications and intense emotional charges, that far from being useful, they become a great obstacle in the path of any true Searcher. In this case, we would have to start from scratch and redefine the Universe using completely new language (or language that has been deeply modified) to arrive at a completely new map. This can be very powerful and it is very highly recommended.
Another strategy is to re-imprint the old word through new experience. If we have an experience that is powerful enough, full of blinding hot radiating Reality, then it may burn away the baggage of the old word and leave it fresh and clean and ready to be used as new. Once I experienced a Real Invocation, and attached the old, used, stained word "invocation" to that experience, the word became new, powerful and recharged. Additionally, I was able to recognize that I had experienced other lesser invocations in my life but I had not recognized them as such. I hadn’t seen them as invocations precisely because they did not fit with my intellectual idea, my imaginary construct, of what an Invocation was.
There can be no substitute for experience.
You may read about these things. You may study carefully, imagine, conjecture, philosophize, theorize, make diagrams in your mind and come to tentative conclusions. You may do this for years and it won’t get you any closer to understanding the true nature of an Invocation. But one single flash of direct real experience with one Real Invocation will bring it, burning and crackling with electrical fire, speeding to the core of your innermost Being.
When such an opportunity comes, may your heart be open enough to receive it and may your eyes be open enough to recognize its true nature.

Machine

True communication is very rare. It seldom occurs during casual transmissions of linguistic data between humans. This is due to the law of associations.
A single word bears different meanings for individuals from varying cultural, economic, geographic, and social backgrounds. There are many words that we use in our daily vocabularies without having any real understanding of what it is that the word actually signifies. They’ve lost meaning due to their careless use and the fact that they are handed down generation to generation as loquacious filler. The handers down, having no experiential understanding of a word, pass the pronunciation on and so the word lives on, but the thing which it once referred to is lost in abstraction.
This is true of words like "Love" and "Soul". You will hear these words often used by individuals who have no experience whatsoever of either love or soul. (In fact, you yourself are probably such a person.)

When I say love, you, no doubt, have certain ideas about the meaning of that word. You might be shocked to know that my understanding of the same word is drastically different from yours, and that your neighbor has an even different idea of what love means than either of us.

Because of this, three people can engage in a verbal exchange and the conversation will be an entirely different one for each of the three persons participating.

So the first step in being able to do anything of significance with anybody is to establish a means by which you can truly communicate. To do this you will need to share experiences and correlate them with a mutual terminology.
Here are some terms I would like to begin to define-

Machine
Being
Awakening
Identification

It is necessary to not only explain their meaning, but to also demonstrate it experientially. For that I will have to suggest experiments.

At present I will begin with defining Machine.
I will from time to time refer to THE MACHINE or THE HUMAN BIOLOGICAL MACHINE or THE MECHANICAL CREATION or THE MORTAL CREATION. All of these terms refer to the same thing. For now, we will go with Machine as short for The Human Biological Machine. This term refers not only to the human body, but to the thoughts and emotions of the human as well.

It is a hard notion to swallow, but your thoughts and feelings are as mechanical as your body. These three cannot be separated, they are co-conspirators.

It can be easy to understand the physical body as a mechanical marvel, it’s mechanicality is more readily observable. It needs to consume, expel some of what it consumes, and rest at regular intervals. It will also seek to reproduce itself. These are the things that it is bound to do to maintain its functioning, and it can perform these functions automatically without the exertion of any special will. It is wired to do so. The thoughts and emotions function in very similar fashion, but at a more subtle level. That makes them harder to observe closely and objectively.

The thoughts and emotions and the physical body work together to maintains an existence. They will fight like hell against anything that seems to threaten that existence. They will also struggle against each other seeking dominance over the triumvirate. Each of the three functions through a simple set of habits formed more or less haphazardly with the objective of continuing to exist.

It is a sophisticated animal, but an animal nonetheless, objectively no more or less valuable than any of the other species populating the planet earth.

It is the Human Biological Machine.

For one week carry a small notepad with you at all times. Throughout the day, record your emotional state. Keep track of the hour of day, the mood or feelings experienced, and a note about the events or circumstance leading up to the mood. Try keeping an hourly record, but note shifts as they occur. In this way, if nothing in particular happens you will still remember that at 1pm you were in your cubicle feeling bored, but that at 1:19 you got a call from a friend and became excited and jolly.