by Jon Rappoport
August 20, 2013
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—recounted as a dialogue—
“Well, Jim, we found a few interesting things when we went into your brain.”
“Really?”
“Yes. A whole lot of poems, in fact.”
“What?! Impossible. That has to be a mistake. I’m just an ordinary guy. I go to work, have a few beers, take the train home, eat dinner, read the paper, do a little note-writing on experiments at the lab, go to bed around midnight…”
“Jim, I’m not asking for your biography—”
“I know, Doc, but what you’re telling me is crazy. I like a limerick now and then, but the weird stuff…Shakespeare and Milton…that’s for the dome heads. I’m just…”
“You’re a regular guy. Got that, Jim. However, I can show you X-rays. Scans. There’s poetry in your brain, and it’s threatening to take over your cerebral cortex unless we go in and do a second surgery.”
“Take over? You’re joking.”
“You have to face up to a few things, Jimbo. You’re actually posing as just another Joe, and it’s a good impression, I’m sure, but inside you there are poems waiting to come out. And if they do, it’s going to get ugly, believe me. For one thing, you’ll see more.”
“See more what?”
“More of what existence can be.”
“THERE ISN’T ANYTHING MORE. There’s what I do every day. My work. My family. My salary. Beers with the boys. Football. I love football.”
“Yes, we all love football, Jim. It’s mandatory. But you…let me read one of the poems we found in your brain.”
“HELL NO.”
“It won’t hurt that much.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Now as I was young and easy, under the apple boughs, about the lilting house, and happy as the grass was green—”
“STOP!”
“Okay, Jim, take it easy, it’s in your head, don’t blame me. We’ve discovered that…how I can put this…on some level you’re always thinking in poetry. Your whole consciousness is involved, and if we were to take the poems away, you’d go into a deep sleep, a kind of amnesia, perhaps a coma, and you’d never wake up. So we can’t surgically remove the poems. At best we can bury them deeper.”
“Do it. Bury them. Bury them all.”
“Yes, Jim, but hear me out. If we do that, you’ll lose something.”
“You mean I won’t like football anymore?”
“No, Jim. You’ll still have football. But you might not have beer. Just kidding. Ha-ha. What you might lose is your interest in life.”
“What do you mean?”
“You may not feel alive in the same way. You could become very dull.”
“How’s that possible, Doc. You’re just getting rid of poems. Who cares?”
“Well, Jim, apparently you do. As much as you’d like to deny it, your existence, your feeling about what it means to be alive—even though you’re trying to emphasize how ordinary you are—is wrapped up in a certain poetic consciousness. I know, it’s strange. But again, don’t blame me.”
“Look, Doc, you went into my skull to remove some kind of little blockage. And then you came up with these poems. And now you want to bury them. But you say if you do, I might turn into a zombie.”
“In the surgery, Jim, there was a leakage. Poems started to come through. We put in a plug, but it’s just temporary. It’s a delicate situation. Going back in a second time, we either let out all the poems, or we build a thicker wall.”
“Let me ask you a question, Doc. This thing, consciousness. What is it?”
“It’s two things, Jim. It’s what makes you know you’re alive, and it’s also how you’re alive. That second part is tricky. You’re alive, Jim, through connecting with the rhythm and sound of certain thoughts, certain energies. And these energies would NEVER come through to you if it weren’t for language, and that language is poetic. It’s much greater than the reality we see around us. You dampen down that language, Jim, because you want to appear normal. It’s your goal in life, to pretend not to understand anything about this. Do you see? You want to come off like a regular guy, who’s smart and good at his job, and who knows what’s happening in the world. But you don’t want to admit you’re connected to…that thing you’re afraid of.”
“But LOOK. I AM a regular guy. All right, so I read the newspaper and I can look behind the stories and I can see a lot of the con games the government is playing on people. I can see crimes and conspiracies. I know something about who’s running the show, who’s behind the curtain. I take pride in that. But this poetry thing. It’s crazy.”
“Yes, I understand, Jim. But that’s not going to cut it in this case. We’re at a serious crossroad. We have to do something. You’re playing with fire, trying to deny your connection. On some level, you’re participating in a greater reality. You’re thinking on a different plane, and that thinking is what we call poetry. We could call it Budweiser, but it wouldn’t make any difference. It’s thought with higher force. It’s great and grand ideas. And they’re coming from you, from your mind. You want to say you’re living in a pond, but you’re living in the ocean. Let me put it this way. If you weren’t accessing oceanic consciousness, you couldn’t step it all down and appear to be a normal very smart guy. It wouldn’t work. You’d have nothing to dampen down.”
“What would I be?”
“A broccoli. A head of lettuce.”
“You’re serious?”
“As serious as an aneurism, Jim.”
“Geez, Doc, this is bad. My whole reputation, my whole rep with MYSELF is riding on the fact that I’m a hardheaded realist. Do you get what’s at stake here?”
“Of course I do. That’s why I’m being so forthcoming. I could have put you under without you knowing it and just cut into your skull again. But I wanted to explain the whole thing to you and give you a choice. You see, Jim, the truth is we’re all living in a charade. We’re all faking it. We’re pretending we don’t have these fantastic energies in us. We’re all stepping it down to average and normal and smart.
It just so happens that, by the luck of the draw, my assistant in the OR nicked a little piece of your brain and opened up a portal into what we’re all trying to avoid. We’re all hooked up to our own poetic centers. We all see life in much wider and deeper terms. I don’t mean little stupid rhymes. I mean great language that vaults us up into atmospheres and spaces that…well, I can’t really do it justice sitting here talking to you. But this is mind control here, Jim. The most profound kind. Self-induced. We do it to ourselves. We cut off access. We keep ourselves ignorant about the language we have…the genuine language that comes out of imagination. If I operate on you again, there’s a chance the wall we build will be too thick, and you’ll wake up with very little awareness. You’ll be regular and normal and average for real. And trust me, Jim, that’s a nightmare. I’ve seen it. The person is, to put it kindly, at an enormous disadvantage.”
“What should I do, Doc?”
“Take a chance, Jim. Let us clear away any scar tissue and just leave an open portal. Let the language and the energies come through. From one faker to another, go for it. Go for the great adventure. Who knows what’ll it be? One thing’s for sure. You won’t be sitting here whining to me. You’ll be you. Dealing with that won’t be easy, but with enough guts, you could make it through. You could show us what we don’t want to see.”
“Doesn’t sound very appealing.”
“That won’t be your problem, Jim. I guarantee it. The problem is, it’ll be too appealing.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. Being who you are is what you’ve sacrificed your whole life. You’re going to retract that sacrifice. Think of it that way. You’re going to pull away the sacrifice like an old coat and burn it in the fire of a thousand new suns…”
“Or else come back as a carrot.”
“Pretty much. People around you will still think you’re Jim, but inside you won’t be anybody or anything. You’ll be a robot with no real consciousness.”
“I hate poetry, Doc.”
“Why do you think that is, Jim?”
“I don’t know. I want things to be simple and clear. Like a story. Beginning, middle, end.”
“Wrapped up like a nice neat package.”
“That’s right.”
“Like your life.”
“Why not?”
“You tell me.”
“I hate poetry.”
“We all do, Jim. It reminds us of something we’d rather forget.”
“So help me forget it, Doc.”
“You want to be a zombie.”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Imagine a world full of zombies, Jim. Everybody cut off from their oceanic consciousness. No poetry ever again.”
“Sounds good. Sounds like realism. No more conflict. No more demons.”
“Demons? Is that what you think I’m talking about, Jim? Your greatest thoughts and energies expressed with their greatest force, with raw beauty and—”
“They’re not RATIONAL, Doc. They’re meaningless. I don’t understand those thoughts. They don’t make any sense.”
“If we build that wall in your brain, Jim, what’s left of you will be a machine. Do you get that?”
“That’s what I want. I want to be a machine. I’ll be fine.”
“Well…okay, kid. Your choice. Your destiny. We’ll prep you for surgery. We’ll make those trillion watts of energy shrink down to a ten-watt bulb.”
“This thing you call poetic consciousness, Doc? It’s just a delusion. And I want to get rid of it.”
“Okay, Jim, I’ll put the genie back in the bottle.”
“Nice talking to you, Doc.”
“I wish that were true, Jim. TYGER, TYGER, BURNING BRIGHT, IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT, WHAT IMMORTAL HAND OR EYE COULD FRAME THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY?”
“See, Doc. That’s just what I mean. What the hell kind of talk is that? I don’t understand it! Get rid of it!”
“Sorry, kid, it just slipped out. I’ll go get ready. Relax. The nurse’ll be in in a minute. Piece of cake.”
“Poetry. Ridiculous. It’s for idiots.”
“Sure, kid.”
“We don’t need poets.”
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)
“Of course not. One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or
ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can
wait.
My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are
with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I
translate into a new tongue.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
…I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.
Press close bare-bosom’d night — press close magnetic
nourishing night!
Night of south winds — night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night — mad naked summer night.
Smile O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of departed sunset — earth of the mountains misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!
Far-swooping elbow’d earth — rich apple-blossom’d earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.
Prodigal, you have given me love — therefore I to you give
love!”
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
That was a stirring journey you took me on there Jon! Edgily evocative of where we’re at – collectively disowning the individual greatness we can never truly get rid of. Tis the choice of the individual – to be an individual or dissolve into the m(or)ass!
This urges me to peruse Whitman a little closer.
Warm regards from the island of Saints and Scholars (no more immune to the systematic herding than anywhere else!)
I’ve still got my guitar…look out now!
– Archaic Revival
Jon – I can’t express what a great post this is – it’s like you gave a massive kick to a can I stuffed a part of myself and busted it open! Thank you!
Proudly re-posted on The All-Seeing Eyebama: http://eyebama.onehumanbeing.com/2013/08/20/you-can-have-consciousness-made-out-of-poetry-or-brain-surgery/
I wrote this to a friend today:
This is the second time JR has quoted from Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill.” My favorite poem of all. I first read it and discussed it in junior college in 1960 and then memorized it back in the early 80’s and recited it to myself every day on walks in Discovery Park.
These last two pieces by JR are brilliant. Poets reach right into your mind and alter it without effort. The words enter unfiltered, because the words and meanings are not really communicated instantly and while the mind is trying to figure out what is being communicated, communication is already happening and what is felt is more like remembering something than learning something and it’s emotional not intellectual.
Wow, Jon, you spoke directly to me here. I feel exactly as you do about poetry, not only the poetry of words, but of life and physical movement itself. The universe is a poem within a poem within a poem…written by a hand so much greater than the primordial consciousness here on earth that none can conceive or perceive IT except to muse, “God Almighty.” But I must tell you, even that is too small to stand beside the The Poetry of “IT” THAT CREATED THIS UNIVERSE.
When I write and move around in my daily life, I demand that all things, even my junk, and if possible, the dirt under my fingernails, conform to poetic flow. Of course, I don’t know if I have reached the point in my writing where 100% of onlookers are able to feel and move with the poetry of my words. But I do defy ALL to be hung up on any itsy-bitsy “hooks” that they may preordain will snag their mental skin like sandpaper as they read my words so that they may yell, “OUCH!–There’s no poetry here!”
I love it. I am as slick as greased owl shit in every conceivable manner. Nothing can snag on me. That’s poetry, son. That’s POETRY.
If my life experiences here are any indication, and of course they are, you and I are so alike regarding poetry that worlds would collide if we got within shouting distance of one another in physical proximity. This is because the present is a positive/negative universe wherein like does not attract like. If we are just so-so alike, we will repel one another when we get just so-so close. Conversely, dissimilarity is attractive. Of course, we (or you or I) could change that whole arrangement if we desired. That’s how it all happens: one simply thinks and does something repeatedly enough until one day one awakes into the day that one has made. Thus, what kind of world is one making for oneself?
What heroic purpose calls this spirit’s soul to birth?
Regard the culture humans make to nurture sapient Earth
and guide the paths their children walk with wisdom, love, and mirth.
Is this the world your soul would make, the gift you longed to birth,
or have we lost our value’s way to squander will and worth?
Horse carts bloom to rocket ships within a lifetime’s years
while inner treasures lie unsought in hearts of frozen tears.
Bright young minds cling terrified to manufactured fears
and lust for stylish trademarked li(v)es and meaningless careers.
What drives this pace of cunning race designed by lords of hell
to snare each one and bind it blind, never knowing whence it fell?
Why trade the light of gnostic sight for group-think’s face to seem,
among webs wove of ciphered clones spinning empty sticky memes?
Each trust and bond they split by trick, twists hope to callous slave of hate;
Yet in this soil of conflict’s waste lie buried seeds sown long to wait
for those who trek space-time’s mind-sea to break this spell of fate.
From realms afar surrendered here within this dream we wake
to pierce benumbing mindlessness, endarkenment’s grasp to shake.
Guardians of love not lost this round nor tranced by the demon’s dance,
embrace instead our inward friends who guide with wisdom’s glance.
Remember our craft of heaven realms that balance the worlds they bring
to flourish the depths of life’s mystery from which true meaning springs.
Host of selves whose courage and sight gives sacred purpose wings,
now fly that mean which beauty knows and the wholly passioned sings.
Brilliant flock let us soar above time, steering paths of intangible grace
through sky of mind with wing spread hearts sailing ships of inner space.
Free we fly through gates of stars to our soul’s home gathering place
where in radiant forests of symphonic light we rejoin our angelic race.
© William Andrew