Imagination and the fire
by Jon Rappoport
September 27, 2014
Once upon a time, human beings lived in cultures where images were alive. What we now call superstitions were, to them, gods and demons and intermediary entities that transmitted or stole the juice and the energy and the power of life.
It’s nearly impossible to project ourselves into such an environment and experience the burgeoning passions that infused experience—because a great shift has occurred.
The West entered, with anticipation, a temple where images were aligned with so-called rational faith.
This eventually precipitated a crisis. If you don’t have, or believe in, images that live and breathe and are intimately connected with life-force, how do you replace them? How do you avoid becoming pallid skeletons of science, whose productions never impart that same fire?
This crisis is reflected all around us every day.
We have become liberated, and in this liberation we are left with emptiness. On top of that, we have decided to assume that passions of the soul should be modulated, like elevator music, to somehow join with our advanced knowledge, in harmonic balance.
It’s no balance; it’s timidity, and this attitude makes us prey to an eerie tolerance of all opinion and custom and point of view and aspiration and stretched-out egalitarianism and criminal action. Giving no offense, under any circumstances, for any reason, is now the coin of the realm.
You might say, with accurate assessment, that these are qualities of the successful salesman. And that is what so many of us have become: ambassadors of the vague and desiccated pulse of our “rational culture.”
We even think of it in religious terms. The message of this church is the honed and blown-dry embrace of Anything. As if this was the message of Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and other teachers of our blurry past.
To counterbalance this bleached present, many of us are drawn into dark theaters to watch suburban humans turned into bloodsucking harpooned-tooth neck fetishists and genetic mistakes and hair-sprouting wolves and irradiated monsters or heroes.
It’s the instant-coffee version of ancient Dionysian adventure. And the accompanying depiction of gym-sex on the screen wouldn’t stir the interest of a mouse in a barn.
Was this why and for what we abandoned the mysteries of the epoch of magic?
For freckled children in a British academy laboring through a paranormal costume drama, tricked out with the accoutrement of grottoes and dark halls?
The crisis on our hands now is not one that is going to go away. It is not going to recede as magic once receded. Because there WAS a reason we liberated ourselves from the Middle Ages and even the Renaissance—a reason beyond technology—and until we find it and face it and deeply accept the new struggle, we are going to see this simulacrum culture of ours make endless cartoons of itself in dried out oceans of concrete.
For what we need to do now, pharmaceuticals and brain research and genetic manipulation and cyber-affectation and instant global communication and worship (or desecration) of profit-making idols hold no answers.
Suppose what took us into the age of rationality was, in some way, connected to the realization that we were, all along, inventing our own demons and gods and demigods and entities of great life-force—and although that knowledge has been shoved into the background, as trivial and passe, while technology has soared, it is still with us, and it overshadows all our machines and their power.
Suppose this is the message: we are the majestic and wild creatures we built the temples to.
We are the makers; we are the architects of all the dreams—and not through some compensatory impulse, but because WE CREATE. That is our natural inclination and the source of our ecstasy. It is only civilization that seems to cast us in other roles.
Our societies and civilizations are arranged to make it seem as if imagination is a preposterous choice—when, in fact, that is what we are here for. That is what got us here.
Societies are actually in a satellite universe, and the prime universe is all imagination.
The underlying hidden and deeply buried cry of our age is: HOW CAN I CREATE?
Ridiculously, we are the artists of no limits who are asking that question of ourselves.
While, in the deep past, we sucked the marrow out of the bones of the gods we invented and thereby felt enormous passions, we knew there was a missing piece, and that piece was an abyss over which we were hanging. So we came all this way to find out that we authored the labyrinth. We built the paths that gave us joy and terror, and now we can consciously and spontaneously make new worlds without end. Not simply as engineers, but as artists.
Swallowing that stark truth may be hard, may be upsetting, but it IS why we made the voyage.
And then pulled our punches.
This is no archaic revival. It’s now, today and tomorrow.
The universe is waiting for imagination for revolutionize it down to its core.
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 emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com.
I believe it is me described herein. I read this article and it resonates. I just need a little tweeking so keep me subscribed. I will order a book when I decide where to start..
I am human struggling to achieve my purpose, these articles are helpful.
I believe that we have only been fooling ourselves, we have been going around in circles forever and think we are on the right track,that is pure hogwash, will we ever truly learn the truth, some of will for sure but not quite enough to change these others minds. Until we are ready to be totally truthful in everything we say and do, nothing will change, thanks.
Jackie, some people have been drawn into a web of lies when they were needing truth and understanding. It’s easy to criticize others that don’t know what you do or make judgements when you don’t know what’s going on in their life. I am learning that people can only operate in the light that’s been given, and you and I can sometimes shed more light for them if we are wiling –
As the Teo says. “Those who know do not speak and those who speak do not know’.
How can you not speak, if you know a fellow human being is suffering because of a bad cause they are making? You might be wise, but if you remain silent, can you still be called their friend? (Even though you might be wrong)
I’m new to your blog. The spirit fire of alternate ideals is apparent. You strike me as somewhat Gnostic in some respects. My compliments. The Gnostics were of course, slaughtered to the last molecule by god loving christians and Roman thugs. Nearly all Gnostic philosophies and musings were destroyed by the 4th century AD. Gotta love them christians…
It is the presence or recognition of the sentient function that creates any ultimate ideal. Thought is imbedded within form in the greater places of time, and thought and form are THE key elements of the greater Universe. The Gnostics called this infinite potential Sophia.
We are occupied here as sentient biologicals with extremely sophisticated sensory systems. It would seem the purpose and direction of any sentient life force, is wholly experiential and ultimately self evident… Self evidence is the purpose of incarnation on a physical level. When we numb and pollute these delicate sensory systems, we numb and pollute the results of our creation…
The Matrix of time and space is occupied with all forms and conceptual realities, and the essential mission of the sentient being is to wax endlessly creative and diverse. We are the missing gods of lost folklore. There are no limits to experience within an infinite personal god potential. There exist realms upon realms to explore. Roman law and christian tradition would have us think otherwise or not think at all. They have made life on Earth a prison sentence, and we are all punishable in the fires of eternal hell. Seems there is wee conflict of sentient function produced by this mentality. No wonder we have endless wars…
The end result of all spiritual conception is an abstract called perfection. Sophia. All forms and ideals move toward this perfection on individual and unique pathways. These paths are wholly divergent, and thus creative of new and perhaps more divergent potentials. These potentials are not necessarily collective or cohesive. Cohesiveness is an interesting term. Rather like a super glue that sticks everything together whether you want it or not… The collective highway is a contrived abstract that leads toward personal entropy rather than unlimited personal creation. Enforced cohesion is anti-god and anti creative.
The chalice of modern “spirituality” only contains the dismantling of the individual concept, and the defining ceremony is wholly vacuous. It is a sort of empty entertainment of the idiot/child. Spirituality as inspired by the current elite, is a paralyzing propaganda ploy for desperate fools. It homogenizes and pasteurizes the personal into a herd of cattle that simultaneously fail to experience the pasture and the infinite goal…
I think Jon is hitting on a very subsantive note. We are so “entertained” that we have lost the knowledge of creativity. Especially my children’s generation. We have bequeathed to them an environment where creativity is like second-hand smoke, and not particpatory.. . My retired farmer friend from North Dakota, could build a space-shuttle if he had the time and materials. That essence is now a vague shadow of our cultural potential.
Jon’s words resonate with me– turn me on because of my wavelength. I’m minded of Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground. Fyodor rejected the rationality of the crystal palace as the be-all, and holistically opted for satisfying the whole man, embracing even the irrational (creative) impulse.
Jon true-to-reality identifies CREATIVITY as the most all-encompassing context of our beings. That which is at the core of our beings is bigger than “the universe.”
LR Hubbard said, “Create, create create, create create create, and then you’ve got a job.” I would extend this fine idea to ” . . . and then you’ve got a life.”
John David Garcia based a whole ethics on creativity in his fine book Creative Transformation.
I’ve taken creative command of my language and mind with ideograms. I’ve opened up this realm of creativity, of liberated being. Neoideograms.wordpress.com
Creative Transformation: A Practical Guide for Maximizing Creativity Paperback – January 1, 2005
by John David Garcia (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Transformation-Practical-Maximizing-Creativity/dp/0874260566/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411923780&sr=1-2&keywords=John+David+Garcia+Creative+Transformation
Pitirim Sorokin: ” Man is a conscious, rational thinker and a supra-conscious creator genius.”(https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pitirim_Sorokin)
I like this; creativity as supra-consciousness.
yes I believe what you say is probably correct. It has taken a very long time, but I see the matrix so clear now.. really to me it is the only way that makes any sense of all this mess our world is in.Humans seem to always need a god to look up to, to tell us what to do, when we know what to do already, I believe as more people catch on, the power “they” have over us will dissolve.. It’s all one ugly game and they got us as the players. Just refuse to play the game anymore, and much more will you become aware of. Best to all of you
Ha ! That’s the point: “It has taken a very long time”.
Same for me & so many others …
The problem is we need the youth to get it, because only twenty somethings can push hard enough to tilt the sleeping minds.
But, as Ricky Barnes says above :”We have bequeathed to them an environment where creativity is like second-hand smoke, and not particpatory”.
And as we now know, everything is done to keep the youth asleep, especially vaccines, and to keep their eyes shut in a perpetual artificial dommed childish mentality.
A military draft might wake up the young people. I am not in favor of one, but it would wake up those sleepy heads.
I know there is a Creator. Science profoundly proves there is an intelligent agent at work, in spite of all those who believe “stochastic processes” led to the beauty that surrounds us. When was the last time anyone witnessed anything evolve (new information) or any living thing give birth to something other then its own kind? There is a huge gap between empirical science and “science theory”. Scientists say that the theory of evolution is a theory in the same way that the theory of gravity is a theory. Unfortunately the only similarity is the use of the word “theory”. It seems religion knows no bounds and now we have an institutionalized church of science in which millions bow before its alter.
Magnificent piece thanks Jon. Very inspirational.
A simple desire. I’d like to live in a society not ruled or attempt to rule by fear. Where paranoid, nacisistic into themselves, control freaks were treated and cured. Religion is just another attempt to control us. A spiritual society would only offer guidance. In a loving manner, of course
.
Creativity. I dreamed of a world being created, from out of some of the gasses of a nebula into a semi solid planet. Surrounded by the multi-colored, brilliant condencing gasses. The servents of the Most High Creator speeding up what was a natural process.
At another time I was given a scene of nature most beautiful. Not a dream so much as a dream picture. The plants, trees, waterfalls, pool, breeze, scents, play of light through the leaves. Uplifting. It was as if I was there in reality. Vivid dreaming if you would but I appreciate such gifts and know who and what it is that I walk with each day in my journey though life. ]
Walk-about should be a continual thing, even when one is at work, having an appreciation for the things that are and the things that could be.
Saw a message taped up on a wall a while back, not sure of who exactly wrote it, but it was called “Washing the Dishes”. Essentially being aware of life and it having meaning you should be observant of it. Each dish has color and texture, shape. The water has the same, and is hot or cold. The motions of washing each dish…etc. Not exactly creative but being aware.
I walked outside and looked up at the night sky. The multitude of stars and other planetary systems. Vast and deep, cold and hot. The Abyss and Heavens.
“Lord, are you made up of all these stars like we are made of molicules and atoms?” I mussed.
The answer came clearly. “No”, but these are the works of his ‘hands’.
YHWH, the Creator. The God of nature and Nature’s God.
Mankind was created to walk besides him, almost as an equal, and origionally as a son rather than as a slave, a God of freedom, who advised the Hebrews to keep a governing system of Judges, instead of Kings, yet they chose the slavery of Kingship to rule over them.
All the wisdom in the world will not help us if we make the wrong choices. Creativity crushed under the boulder of tyranny. We must be carefull.
Pick the ‘apple’ off the tree of wisdom and eating it without first asking WHY it would poison us if we did so. Think,…Question, don’t just bumble around learning by experience like our original parents did or we may end up destroying the planet instead of just a garden.