The artist vs. the “religion” called consensus reality

by Jon Rappoport

October 22, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

Time and time again, we come back to this: the core of the individual human being is creative power, imagination, invention.

Through the ongoing process of the creative act, an individual moves higher and deeper into uniqueness. In the long, long run, everything else turns out to be a short-circuited consensus, an attachment to a story told by someone else.

Basically, the mechanical structure of consensus is derived from the concept that:

Everything is connected to everything.

This notion is increasingly hailed as a positive marvel. For example, in quantum entanglement, paired particles, even at great distances from each other, both react to an impact on either particle.

“Everything/connected” produces a sensation of Weave&All Inclusiveness.

It’s ultimately designed for long-term rental. The occupant is there, and there he will stay.

Feeling this “everything is connected to everything” is meant to instill a sense of the sacred. The mind completes the equation: sacred=forever.

But this kind of “sacred” is no more forever than listening to a Bach concerto is forever. It’s one thing to bathe in a majestic feeling. It’s quite another thing to infer it means eternal occupancy.

There are many people ready to shake your hand and embrace you and welcome you into the labyrinth, the weave, the connection of everything to everything.

People aspire to be wired into the “everything/connected” apparatus as their highest ambition—which is their primary substitute for imagination.

That they don’t realize this doesn’t make it any less true.

Let’s say you’re an actor. You work in a repertory theater that stages 100 plays. In each play, you have a role, a different role. You’re “connected” to each one of those roles. BUT YOU’RE AN ACTOR. That means you can inhabit a role and then take it off like a coat.

However, this distinction is lost on most people. When they hear that “everything is everything,” they grab that role and hold on to it and move in, lock, stock, and barrel, hoping it will be forever.

The idea of “everything/connected” is quite old. You can find it enunciated in ancient Egypt and China, and traces of it exist in Aristotle. It’s sometimes arranged as a hierarchy. The “great chain of being.”

So are we talking about an architecture of the universe or a notion in the mind?

Think of “everything/connected” as a style of building among various possible styles.

And its goal is the inducement of awe. That is the stage play.

People join the “everything/connected” church. They want to be in that congregation.

When you take apart the “everything is everything,” it’s not as sensational as it first seemed.

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Let’s pretend that a few Chinese sages, long ago, decided to float a trial balloon.

They spread the word that opposites could resolve in a state of harmony (everything connected). Each polarity could reflect the other.

It was a poetic thought that might be embedded in a few verses.

The sages watched and waited. Eventually, they saw that this fancy had taken hold. In fact, it had become embedded in a philosophy. It was now being discussed as a principle of the universe, the cosmos.

The sages were shocked but not surprised. Humans exhibit strange fetishes.

What started out as a poet’s passing rumination on a summer afternoon—entertained purely for the purpose of writing verse—was now an all-embracing weave of metaphysical consensus.

I use this as an illustration of “piling on”—adding one piece of imaginative art to another, on and on, and inferring that the sum is Ultimate Reality (consensus).

Richard Jenkins, the extraordinary healer I write about in The Secret Behind Secret Societies (part of the Exit From the Matrix collection), once told me, “Most people aren’t satisfied with just two or three myths. They have to keep adding new ones. It’s like children with dolls and clothes. You’ve got to have more outfits.”

Nearly 40 years ago, I rented a garage in Santa Monica and turned it into a studio. It was small, and I wanted to paint large. I stretched three canvases, the biggest of which was 15×8 feet. Because there wasn’t enough room in the studio, I kept painting over that canvas.

Six months later, I had done perhaps 15 paintings on the one canvas—each painting covering the one before it. I’d used all sorts of paints—acrylic, oil, enamel. Finally, I painted the whole thing black.

I looked at the black space for a few days, and I noticed there was a small glint of light green peeking through in the lower left.

I worked at the area with my fingernails, and suddenly a two-foot section of black came away like a swath of rubber, exposing many colors and shapes, which were intact.

I realized that, because I’d used different kinds of paint, the layers hadn’t adhered perfectly.

For the next week, using a screwdriver and a mallet, I uncovered painting after painting, going back in time.

Eventually, I settled on a painting composed of several layers. I liked it.

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If I had been a devotee, I would have fallen on my knees at that point. I would have, for the moment, been happy I’d determined how many layers (myths) were necessary to give me the One Painting For All Time. The permanent fixed reality.

But it was a painting. And of course, since I was the artist, I knew that.

Consensus reality endures because there is an audience for it.

And audience is fascinated by, and glued to, STORY.

For example, the hero is faced with a problem which turns into a mystery, and he then penetrates the mystery after much work and danger—during which time his friends lose faith in him—and finally he does away with the villain at the heart of the mystery…

WHATEVER KEEPS AUDIENCE BEING ONLY AUDIENCE KEEPS CONSENSUS REALITY IN PLACE.

For the most part, audience wants to remain being audience, and it will search for and rationalize ways to do just that.

Story has beginning, middle, and end. This pattern, so obvious and universal, is rarely thought about, but it creates a trance. Try writing a story without that sequence and see how many people want it.

“I’m audience, and I want beginning, middle, and end, over and over.”

Part of being audience is experiencing the letdown that happens after the story ends. This depression stimulates the need for another story. And on and on it goes. But the letdown, at a deeper subconscious level, is really about a dissatisfaction with the WHOLE PATTERN of story—people want to break out of that. They want to conquer that addiction.

And how is that done?

Well, the first step is being able to invent stories of your own.

And this is where people balk.

At a conference some years ago, I gave a talk about freedom. In the middle of the talk, I told the audience we were going to do a few exercises that would possibly stimulate their sense of freedom. The very notion that I was asking them to DO something, to come out of their audience-trance…which they hadn’t expected, caused a stir, a sense of apprehension. They were programmed for beginning, middle, and end—and I was suddenly shredding that.

They had planned on being entertained with the notion of freedom.

After the lecture, a friend of mine came up to me and said, “Did you catch what happened there, when you told them you were going to have them do exercises?”

“Sure,” I said. “I did it on purpose.”

AUDIENCE DOESN’T INVENT.

THEY EXPERIENCE.

AND THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT.

MATRIX.

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. 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 emails at www.nomorefakenews.com