INTO THE FUTURE
“The universe speaks to God, and God speaks to the universe. A table speaks to a tiger. A quantum of energy speaks to his brother a hundred light years away. A beggar speaks with a president—and then they switch roles. The gold rush of 1849 speaks to the first human journey beyond this solar system. The lowly ant and a mighty galaxy hold a conversation. All this happens in the Magic Theater, because human beings improvise the roles. And therefore, things change.”
Jon Rappoport, Magic Theater Foundations
SEPTEMBER 30, 2011. It should be apparent from the above quote that, in the Magic Theater, there is no Final Voice. No authority spouting the last word. There is no “this is the ultimate structure.” No prophetic painting of the way things must be. No expert who imposes his superior knowledge.
Actually, in the Magic Theater, there is room for all of the above—as roles people play. They can be Final Voice and authority and conveyor of the ultimate structure and painter who reveals exactly how things will be and famous expert—among a billion other roles.
In dialogue with each other. Improvised dialogue.
This changes reality.
The notion of universe and cosmos presenting us with What Finally Exists is revealed as a short-run stage play that should have closed down before it began.
I started the Magic Theater to topple false thrones of knowledge in favor of unlimited imagination.
All groups, societies, and civilizations eventually prefer canned ideas that no longer have life. Unseating this massive habit begins with people stepping outside their normal and average points of view and taking on roles that ask for something new, something unpredictable.
At which point, what is impossible becomes eminently possible. And so our perception undergoes a shift.
Perhaps we will eventually learn that the lowly ant has something to say. And the bumblebee, too, and the snake that crawls on his belly, and the hummingbird and all the creatures that mysteriously populate the Earth. Maybe at one time they had empires we know nothing about.
Can a star sitting in the dark sky talk to us? Can whole galaxies engage in discourse?
Well here and now, we can enact their roles, and unleash our imaginations, without which we will never know the overwhelming majority of happenings in the universe, because imagination opens our eyes.
How many gods have been painted and carved and worshiped since the beginning of Earth time? We can play them all. We can speak with their voices and have them confer with one other. We can set up any god and have him talk with a coal miner or a shoe salesman or a secretary or a domehead professor of religious studies. We can take the gods to task for failing to provide the bounty they apparently hoard in secret places, and see what they have to say in reply.
We can open a dialogue with Mystery itself in the abstract. We can enact the role of the forces of nature in progress.
All this can happen without sets, lights, props, scripts, directors, rehearsals, or the money men who launch lavish productions. We simply begin. We improvise. There are no tests for reliability, no comparisons to a prior template.
We say we want entertainment, we sit numbly and watch television until we fall asleep under the weight of programs made for androids and idiots, but here is entertainment we can fashion ourselves out of nothing, with profound alchemical consequences.
Why watch a slick, fast-moving treatise on ancient Egypt, when we could actually play the gods and priests and priestesses and pyramids and, yes, the mighty Sphinx with the fractured face. I think it likely, in that way, we will approach more closely the actual spirit of long-ago time—and if not, we’ll certainly reveal and express our own spirit. Not a bad trade-off. “You speak as the high priest and I’ll speak as the slave, and then we’ll switch.”
What do you want to play today? The silver phantom who passes through walls and can make the trip from here to Orion in five seconds? Fine. I’ll be a microbe working with the tiniest roots of a tree to produce the subtle flavors of a plum.
No boundaries, no limits, no thing too large or small.
Real theater.
It comes down to this. This society is built on fear of embarrassment. “Well, if I pretended I was anything other than what I am, I would feel like a fool. My friends would say I was crazy.”
Yes, exactly. And if you are satisfied with the central role you’re playing out in life, all the way to the end, then fine. Stay with it. Good luck.
But if you’ve sensed that something is rotten in Denmark, that our civilization is largely built on conventional roles people fit themselves into, and that this sort of doleful theater can be greatly expanded, into a high adventure, as a modern alchemy of consciousness, then recognize there are no limits on what parts can be played or what dialogues can be improvised, in a true theater of imagination.
And for all those students who have been trying to discover the far shore of enlightenment, illumination, I can tell you this. Inhabiting and speaking from the role of The Already Enlightened to, say, The Embattled Seeker, for an hour or two—and then exchanging places—will offer the kind of revelation that is not on the path you walk.
Somewhere in our subconscious, we tend to believe there is another role, a single role which, if we could take it on, would make us happier, more alive. I’m suggesting there is something beyond that which we haven’t considered. I’m suggesting the whole notion of wanting that One Other Role which seems out of reach is a clue to more, much more: if we play out, in a live theater of imagination, MANY other roles, we crack the egg of our present lives and find ourselves in new spaces, with new energies, and a freedom that was always ours to have.
Jon Rappoport
This is the last day of the September nomorefakenews fund drive. Heartfelt thanks to those who contributed to this work. To make a donation, go to PayPal, click the “send money” button, and enter qjrconsulting@gmail.com. You don’t need to have your own PayPal account.